Have you heard the story of Jim Thorpe?
Not only was he the first Native American to win gold at the Olympics, but he's easily one of the most athletic human beings in history. He didn't just dominate at the 1912 Olympics with minimal training, but he obliterated nearly every sport he tried. During his unbelievable career, he played professional football... and professional baseball... and professional basketball.
Jim Thorpe's story is the story of a man overcoming utterly impossible obstacles in such a way that it seemed almost easy. He had to overcome personal tragedy, unbelievable racism, sabotaging teammates, and the death of multiple family members - including his mother - when he was a child. But he still overcame.
In his legendary 1912 Olympic events, someone stole his shoes - so he simply found two mismatched shoes in the garbage. One was too big and one was too small. Oh, and he still won gold. And then set several records, which you'll learn about later in this essay. The man was essentially unstoppable.
Jim Thorpe is a personal hero of mine and, I believe, the greatest athlete to have ever lived.
Jim Thorpe was a legendary Native American athlete who dominated the 1912 Olympics, winning gold. He also played professional football, professional baseball, and professional basketball.
When you think of the greatest athletes of all time a few names likely come to mind. Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky, and Babe Ruth are some of the world's most famous and skilled athletes and consistently land in the top five when listing out the greatest athletes ever.
Another name that frequents these lists is Jim Thorpe. While his name might not be recognizable to the average American anymore, he was once a household name across the country. I think it's time Thorpe made a comeback. If you want to remember people for their athletic accomplishments, then everyone should know his name and story.
Unlike the other legends listed above, Thorpe didn't just excel in one particular sport. When you're talking about who the greatest multi-sport, all-around athlete is, most people would tell you that the answer is undoubtedly Jim Thorpe.
Sure, there are some other incredibly talented multi-sport athletes out there and men with remarkably versatile skills. Deoin Sanders, Carl Lewis, Wilt Chamberlain, and Jim Brown come to mind.
But Thorpe was in a league of his own.
He won the gold in the 1912 Olympic Games in both the pentathlon and the decathlon-- both of which are multi-event games that show his ridiculous versatility.
He didn't stop there, though. He played major league baseball for seven years, professional football for 13 years, and professional basketball for at least two years.
It's really difficult to say which sport Thorpe is best known for.
He was an All-Pro back as a professional football player. He kept the Olympic record for his points total for two decades after winning eight of the fifteen individual events of the decathlon and pentathlon.
As a basketball player, Thorpe displayed his abilities barnstorming all over the country. While his baseball numbers weren't statistically outrageous, the fact that he was able to compete at the highest level of the game certainly says something.
Basically, Thorpe could play any sport he tried with ease. He is a true sports legend and an American icon.
If you've ever come across a social media post about Jim Thorpe, there's a good chance it was accompanied by this picture of the legend during the 1912 Olympic Games:
Why, you ask?
Look at his feet-- he's wearing two different shoes.
When this photo was taken, Thorpe had already crushed the field in the pentathlon, placing first in four of the five events. During the 1,500-meter run, he left his opponents in the dust, beating the man in second place by nearly five seconds.
The next week, it was time for him to compete in the decathlon which occurred over the course of three days.
In the pouring rain, Thorpe ran an 11.2-second 100-meter dash. No one was able to match that time at the Olympics until 1948.
Sometime after this event, just about the worst thing that can happen to a track and field athlete during the Olympics happened-- his shoes went missing.
Some accounts say that his shoes were missing on the second day of the decathlon. Others say that they disappeared a few minutes before the 1500-meter race portion of the decathlon was about to begin.
There are a lot of different theories about what exactly happened here-- who took Thorpe's shoes? Why were they missing? Had they been stolen?
Bob Wheeler, the author of the biography Jim Thorpe: The World's Greatest Athlete and the founder of the Jim Thorpe Foundation, believes that it was right before the 1500-meter race that his shoes went missing. He is a fairly credible source, considering that he conducted more than 200 interviews with teammates, friends, and family members of Jim Thorpe while writing his 1979 biography.
According to Wheeler, the story goes like this:
A few minutes between the decathlon's 1500-meter race, Thorpe's shoes were nowhere to be found. One of his teammates gave him one shoe to borrow. The second shoe? He found it in the garbage.
Not only was he wearing two mismatched shoes, but one of them was way too big for his foot and one of them was way too small.
The solution?
Thorpe squeezed his foot into the small shoe and wore extra socks on one of his feet to make the shoe fit better.
Most of us would whine and complain if we had to walk around in a too-big shoe and a too-small shoe for ten minutes at the grocery store.
Thorpe didn't just go out and compete against the world's greatest decathletes in the 1500 meters with mismatched shoes that didn't fit. He went out and won.
This is a timeless story that has a powerful message more than one hundred years later. It says never give up. Never quit. Never let obstacles stop you from attaining greatness.
Thorpe was the winner of the final event of the Olympic Games-- the 1500 meter (it's worth noting that Thorpe ran the 1500 meter twice during the Games, once for the pentathlon and once for the decathlon. He smoked the competition both times.)
Each gold medalist was crowned with a laurel wreath as they came up to receive their medals by King Gustav of Sweden.
According to the New York Times, the crowd gave a "great burst of cheers led by the King" when Thorpe received his pentathlon gold.
For his decathlon performance, Thorpe wasn't just given his medal. He also received a bust of the king and a Viking ship-shaped jewel-encrusted chalice.
King Gustav of Sweden grabbed Thorpe's hand firmly and said, his voice shaking with emotion:
"Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world."
What did Thorpe say in response?
"Thanks, King."
There is a lot we don’t know for certain about the beginning of Jim Thorpe’s life.
While it’s known that he was born in Indian Territory that would later be known as the state of Oklahoma, and he was baptized as “Jacobus Franciscus Thorpe” in the Catholic Church, no birth certificate was ever found for the American hero.
Most biographers believe that Thorpe was born near the town of Prague on May 22, 1887, which is the date that is listed on his baptismal certificate. However, Thorpe himself once said his birthday was May 28, 1888, in a note to The Shawnee News-Star in 1943. He also said that he was born:
“...Near and south of Bellemont– Pottawatomie County– along the banks of the North Fork River… hope this will clear up inquiries to my birthplace.”
Jim Thorpe grew up fishing, hunting, and learning from elders in what is now central Oklahoma, but what was, at the time, Sac and Fox land. He also played sports growing up, with baseball being an early favorite.
Both the parents of Jim Thorpe were of mixed-race ancestry. Hiram Thorpe, his father, was born to a Sac and Fox Indian mother and an Irish father. Charlotte Vieux, his mother, was born to a Potawatomi mother (descended from Chief Louis Vieux) and a French father.
According to popular legend, Jim Thorpe is a descendant of the infamous warrior Chief Black Hawk.
The autobiography of Black Hawk, entitled Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nation, was the first Native American autobiography that was published in the United States.
“I am no more proud of my career as an athlete than I am of the fact that I am a direct descendant of that noble warrior [Chief Black Hawk].” – Jim Thorpe
The native name of Jim Thorpe was Wa-Tho-Huk, which can be translated to mean “path lit by great flash of lightning,” or, more succinctly, “Bright Path.”
Raised as a Sac and Fox Indian, Thorpe’s native name comes from the fact that the path that led to the cabin where he was born was brightened by lightening around the time of his birth. This was custom for the Sac and Fox, who named their people something that happened near birth time.
Thorpe had a twin brother named Charlie, and the two of them attended the Sac and Fox Indian Agency school in Stroud. Sadly, Charlie died of pneumonia when the boys were nine.
It is known that Thorpe ran away from the school he attended a number of times. Eventually, he was sent to an Indian boarding school (the Haskell Institute in Lawrence, Kansas) by his father. The reason he was sent away? So he would stop running away.
His life was struck by tragedy again when his mother died of complications during childbirth just two years after Thorpe was sent to the Haskell Institute. Understandably, he was left deeply depressed by the death of his mother. After getting into fight after fight with his father, Thorpe decided to leave home in order to work on a horse ranch.
When Thorpe was about sixteen in 1904, he went back to see his father again. He decided to go to the flagship Indian boarding school in the U.S. during the time– Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. This school was founded in 1879 with the purpose of training Indians for hands-on trades and assimilating them into mainstream culture.
It was during this time that Thorpe’s incredible athletic ability was first recognized.
He was coached by one of the most influential coaches of early American football– Glenn Scobey “Pop” Warner.
Soon thereafter, Thorpe’s father died from gangrene poisoning after a hunting accident. This left the young man an orphan, and he dropped out of school once again. Before later returning to the Carlisle School, Thorpe spent another few years working on farms.
In 1907, In his third year at the school, Thorpe wandered by track and field practice and easily cleared a 5’9” high jump bar wearing his heavy overalls. In his plain street clothes, he beat all of the school’s high jumpers.
He didn’t just impress people with his athletic abilities in track and field, though. During this time, he also competed in:
That's right– ballroom dancing. In fact, he won the 1912 intercollegiate ballroom dancing championship.
Though Pop Warner was reluctant to let his best track and field athlete play the intensely physical sport of football, Thorpe convinced him to let him attend practice and try some rushing plays against the school’s defensive team.
Warner permitted this, figuring that Thorpe would quickly give up the idea after being tackled easily.
Of course, that never happened. Instead, Thorpe “ran around past and through them not once, but twice.” After his impressive display, Thorpe flipped Warner the football while saying that “Nobody is going to tackle Jim.”
It was in 1911 that the American people started to notice Thorpe’s tremendous athletic ability. In a game against Harvard, a top-ranked team at the time, Thorpe scored all four of the field goals in the 18-15 upset. Amazingly, his team completed this season with a record of 11-1.
Thanks to Thorpe, Carlisle won the national collegiate championship in 1912. During the season, he scored a whopping 198 points and scored 25 touchdowns. By some accounts, he was responsible for 224 points and 27 touchdowns during this time.
Jim Thorpe even played against future President Dwight D. Eisenhower during a 1912 game against the West Point Army team. While the 92-yard touchdown Thorpe made during the game was nullified due to a penalty against a teammate, Thorpe rushed for a 97-yard touchdown in the next play. During the game, Eisenhower injured his knee when attempting to tackle Thorpe.
Eisenhower spoke of Thorpe’s performance during this game in a 1961 speech, stating that:
“Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed. My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe. He never practiced in his life, and he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
In 1908, Thorpe received third-team All-American football honors. After heading to North Carolina for a time to pitch for the Rocky Mount Railroaders, Thorpe was lured back to Carlisle by Pop Warner. In 1911 and 1912, he was named a first-team All-American.
Even though Thorpe would gain his greatest fame from track and field, he didn’t compete in the sport in 1910 or 1911. Despite his incredible skills in a number of athletic endeavors, football was Thorpe’s favorite sport to play.
Jim Thorpe started training for the Olympics in the spring of 1912. Initially, he focused on hurdles, shot-puts, and jumps. However, being so incredibly versatile and skilled as an athlete, he added in the javelin, pole vaulting, discus, 56 lb weight, and hammer.
He earned himself a spot on the Olympic team thanks to his all-around ability during the Olympic trials held at Celtic Park in New York.
There were two new multi-event sports included in the 1912 Summer Olympics– the pentathlon and the decathlon.
The pentathlon was based on the event that had been a part of the Ancient Olympic Games, and consisted of:
The decathlon was also inspired by the pentathlon, but instead of consisting of five events, this one had ten. All the way back in 1884, there had been a ten-event competition known as the “all-around” or “all-round” championship which was quite similar to the modern decathlon.
The first appearance of the modern decathlon as a part of the Olympic Athletics program was at the Stockholm 1912 games– the games where Jim Thorpe displayed his superior athletic abilities.
The decathlon is split into two different days of events:
Since Thorpe was so versatile as an athlete (for example, he had gone to a number of track meets with Carlisle and served as a one-man team,), both of these new Olympic sports seemed the perfect fit for Thorpe.
After entering the trials for both events, Thorpe earned a place on the pentathlon team and was chosen to represent the U.S. in the decathlon.
You would think that competing in these two multi-sport events would be enough for most athletes. Thorpe, though, also competed in the high jump and the long jump at the 1912 games.
The first competition Thorpe competed in during the games was the pentathlon on July 7. Out of the five events, he won four. The fifth event– javelin– he had never competed in before that year and still placed third.
Thorpe won the gold medal and went on to qualify for the high jump final the same day. A few days later, he participated in the long jump and placed seventh.
The last event Thorpe participated in during those summer games was the decathlon. This was his first and only decathlon in his entire life.
He went into the competition with some serious competition lined up. Everyone was expecting a strong performance by Hugo Wieslander, a Swedish athlete that had set the inaugural world record for the pentathlon the previous year.
He was no match for Thorpe in these games, though. Jim Thorpe defeated Wieslander in the decathlon by 688 points. Out of the ten events, Thorpe placed in the top four in every single one.
For nearly two decades, his Olympic record of 8,413 points stood strong.
Out of the fifteen individual events that made up the decathlon and the pentathlon, Thorpe won eight.
All of this is remarkable on its own. To understand just how incredible his feats were during those games, you have to realize that someone had stolen his shoes just before he was due to compete.
While many athletes might be completely shot down by this occurrence, which their shoes being the most essential gear they have, Thorpe quickly found two replacement shoes. Not only were the shoes mismatched, but he fished one of them out of a trash can.
A true king, he put these ill-matched shoes on and won the gold medal.
The 1912 Summer Olympics also saw the sport of baseball for the first time in the history of the games. Included as a demonstration sport (meaning it was played to promote it rather than as a regular medal competition,) a game was played between the United States and Sweden.
The U.S. team was made up of various members of the track and field athletics delegation. One of the participating athletes was Jim Thorpe himself, who played in one of the two exhibition baseball games.
At the closing ceremonies of the games, Thorpe won two gold medals as well as two challenge prizes. These were donated by Czar Nicholas II of Russia for the pentathlon and King Gustav V of Sweden for the decathlon.
It is said that King Gustav commented to Thorpe when he was giving him his prize:
"You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world"
Thorpe is believed to have simply said in return:
“Thanks, King.”
When Thorpe came home, he was given a hero’s welcome. At a ticker-tape parade on Broadway shortly thereafter, he was the star attraction.
After his domination at the Olympics, Thorpe went back to Celtic Park where he had qualified for the games several months earlier. There, he competed in the Amateur Athletic Union’s All-Around Championship.
Out of the ten events held, Thorpe won seven.
What happened in the other three? He came in second, of course.
During his performance, Thorpe broke the previously standing record of 7,385 points that had been set several years earlier in 1909 by achieving a total point score of 7,476.
The broken record had been held by Martin Sheridan, who was the Irish American Athletic Club’s champion athlete. Sheridan himself was no lightweight when it came to athletics, having won five Olympic gold medals.
When Thorpe broke his record, he was there to watch it happen.
A good sport, he went up to Jim Thorpe after the event. As he reached out to shake his hand, he said:
"Jim, my boy, you're a great man. I never expect to look upon a finer athlete."
Sheridan went on to sing Thorpe’s praises to a New York World reporter, saying:
"Thorpe is the greatest athlete that ever lived. He has me beaten fifty ways. Even when I was in my prime, I could not do what he did today."
In 1912, athletes participating in the Olympics were held to strict rules about amateurism. At the time, athletes weren’t considered amateurs if they:
In order to compete in the Olympics, athletes had to be amateurs and not professionals by this definition.
Months after Thorpe’s domination of the games, in January 1913, it was reported that he had previously played professional baseball by the Worcester Telegram. The story was further circulated by newspapers around the country.
In 1909 and 1910, Thorpe received meager pay as a professional baseball player in the Eastern Carolina League. It is reported that he received somewhere between $2 and $35 per week, which, in today’s money, amounts to a range of $58 and $1,018.
The kicker was that college athletes regularly played professionally during the summers to help them earn some money. To sidestep rules against amateurism, most of these players used aliases. Thorpe, however, did not.
The American public didn’t care that Thorpe had briefly played professional baseball. He was an American hero. However, the case was taken very seriously by the Amateur Athletic Union. One of the founders and the secretary of the AAU, James E. Sullivan, was particularly concerned with Thorpe’s previous stint playing professional baseball.
Thorpe wrote a letter to Sullivan to help explain that, while he had played pro baseball, he didn’t know he was doing anything wrong. In fact, he was just following the example of other college athletes.
“I hope I will be partly excused by the fact that I was simply an Indian schoolboy and did not know all about such things. In fact, I did not know that I was doing wrong, because I was doing what I knew several other college men had done, except that they did not use their own names …”
This honest admission, unfortunately, didn’t help his case. Thorpe’s amateur status was retroactively withdrawn, and the International Olympic Committee stripped him of the titles, medals, and awards he had won in the Olympics.
To further complicate the controversy, both the AAU and IOC had broken their own rules in disqualifying Thorpe. Protests had to be made “within 30 days from the closing ceremonies of the games” according to the 1912 Olympics rule book, but the first reports of the issues didn’t pop up until six months after the conclusion of the games.
Beyond that, there’s even some evidence that Thorpe’s time playing pro baseball was known to the AAU before he competed in the Olympics. Only when confronted with this fact did they decide it was a meaningful issue.
It wasn’t until three decades after his death that his status as an amateur was restored in 1982 and his family was presented with two medals in a ceremony.
However, the battle to correct the record wasn’t over.
Even though the IOC had restored his status as an amateur and returned the medals to his family, they didn’t declassify the other medalists from the 1912 games. This means that he was still essentially considered a co-winner, rather than rightfully restored as the sole winner.
Believe it or not, it wasn’t until July 2022, 110 years after the Olympic Games in Sweden, that the IOC announced that Thorpe would be reinstated as the sole Olympic champion in both the pentathlon and the decathlon.
Being stripped of his medals was devastating to Jim Thorpe. The only positive outcome of the whole ridiculous endeavor was that he started receiving offers from professional sports clubs as soon as it was reported that he had been declared a professional.
Thorpe was a free agent at the major league level after the Olympics because his contract had disbanded in 1910 with the minor league team that he had last played for. This was highly unusual for the time because this was during the era of the reserve clause in North American professional sports. This meant that pro athletes rarely had the opportunity to change teams unless they were given an unconditional release.
This meant that Jim Thorpe had his pick of the litter when it came to which team to play for.
Turning down an offer with the St. Louis Browns, he decided to join the New York Giants. The Giants had been the National League champions the previous year.
With the help of Thorpe’s superior athletic abilities, the Giants once again became the National League champions in 1913.
Shortly after the Giants lost the World Series, they embarked on a world tour with the Chicago White Sox. Unquestionably, the celebrity on the tour was Jim Thorpe.
On this incredible journey around the country and the world, Thorpe was able to meet major world figures including Pope Pius X and Abbas II Hilmi Bey. He even played to a huge crowd in London that included King George V.
Thorpe continued to play sporadically for the Giants. He had a short stint with the Milwaukee Brewers (a minor league team) before returning to the Giants and then being sold to the Cincinnati Reds.
His team-hopping didn’t end there– he went back to the Giants before being traded to the Boston Braves in 1919.
Until 1922, Thorpe continued to play minor league baseball.
While it sounds like Thorpe was pretty busy playing baseball after the Olympics, he hadn’t abandoned his love of football. He played with the Pine Village Pros in 1913 and then with the Canton Bulldogs in 1915.
The Bulldogs certainly recognized the worth of this incredible athlete. Reportedly, Thorpe was paid $250 per game, which amounts to nearly $6,700 in today’s dollars. At the time, this was a truly incredible wage.
The team got their money's worth, too. Before Thorpe joined the team, about 1,200 would attend their games. For Thorpe’s debut game, 8,000 fans showed up– more than six times more than the average attendance.
Thorpe played for the Bulldogs for a number of years. In one particularly legendary championship game in 1919, Thorpe put the game out of reach to the competition by kicking a (wind assisted) 95-yard punt from the 5-yard line of his own team.
The Bulldogs were one of fourteen teams to form the American Professional Football Association in 1920– the organization that would become the NFL in just two years.
Who did they select as the inaugural president of the APFA? Why, Jim Thorpe, of course.
True to his nature, though, Thorpe just spent most of the year playing football for Canton. His tenure as the president of APFA only lasted until 1921.
Between 1921 and 1923, Thorpe helped to organize and played for an all-Native American team, the Oorang Indians.
Even though the team didn’t do that well, Thorpe’s incredible skills during the seasons were recognized. He was selected for the first All-NFL team in 1923, which later was recognized formally to be the league’s official All-NFL team.
After having played football for six different teams between 1920 and 1928 and playing in 52 games, Jim Thorpe retired from professional football at the age of 41.
Believe it or not, Jim Thorpe also had a basketball career that was unknown even to his biographers until 2005. How did they find out about his stint as a pro basketball player? From a ticket was found in an old book.
Thorpe played on a traveling basketball team as the primary feature of the “World Famous Indians” of LaRue. For at least two years, he barnstormed with the team in a number of states.
At this point, you must be thinking that we’ve reached the end of Thorpe’s athletic versatility. After all, he dominated in track and field while also playing professional baseball and football all while he was still a young man.
Believe it or not, though, Thorpe also considered going into professional hockey for the Tecumseh Hockey Club in Canada for a brief time in 1913. Imagine being so athletically talented that you could choose to play just about any sport at the pro level!
Over the course of his life, Thorpe married three times and was the father of eight children.
His first marriage was to Iva M. Miller in 1913, who he met at Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Between 1917 and 1923, the couple lived in a home in Yale, Oklahoma that is now known as the Jim Thorpe House.
Together, they had four children:
In 1925, Iva filed for divorce on the grounds of desertion.
A year later, Thorpe married for the second time to Freeda Verona Kirkpatrick, who was working for the manager of the baseball team Thorpe was playing on. Together, they had four children:
After fifteen years of marriage, in 1941, Freeda filed for divorce.
Four years later, Thorpe would marry the woman that he spent the rest of his life with. On June 2, 1945, he married Patricia Gladys Askew.
It is unclear how many descendants there are living of Jim Thorpe's. One grandson, Michael D. Koehler of Chicago, was a football star himself in his youth. He went on to be an educator and coach before passing away in 2015. Several of his grandsons were present to receive the AAU Gussie Crawford Lifetime Achievement Award for their grandfather, and a number of grandchildren have been outspoken about their opinions regarding the campaign to reinstate Jim Thorpe’s place as the sole winner of the decathlon and the pentathlon during the 1912 Olympic games.
Once his athletic career had come to a close, Thorpe struggled working jobs that weren’t related to sports. He found it difficult to provide for his family and never stayed with the same job for very long.
He had worked a ton of different jobs during the Great Depression, including as an extra in a number of movies. In most cases, he was cast in Westerns as an American Indian chief.
Thorpe was cast as himself in a 1932 comedy Always Kickin’, where he played a coach that was instructing young players how to drop-kick.
While the Great Depression was still going strong, Thorpe sold the film rights to his life story for $1,500, which is about $27,000 in today’s money.
In 1940 and 1950, Thorpe was in the films Knute Rockne, All American, and Wagon Master, respectively.
In 1951, the truly legendary athletic career of Jim Thorpe was memorialized in the film Jim Thorpe- All American. There had been a number of rumors that Thorpe didn’t get any money for the film, but Warner Brothers did pay him $15,000 in addition to $2,500 that went towards an annuity for him.
In addition to working in films after his athletic career, Thorpe worked a bunch of different jobs, including:
During WWII, Thorpe even briefly joined the Merchant Marines.
In his later life, Thorpe sadly struggled with chronic alcoholism until his death in 1953.
The later years of Jim Thorpe were plagued with problems, including chronic alcoholism and money troubles. In 1950, he was admitted to a Philadelphia hospital as a “charity case” to treat lip cancer.
While dining with his wife in their Lomita, California home, Patricia, in early 1953, Thorpe went into heart failure for the third time. For a brief period of time, he was able to speak to the people around him after being revived by artificial respiration. Shortly thereafter, though, he lost consciousness and passed away. The world’s greatest athlete died at the age of 65.
Supporters of Thorpe fought for decades for his Olympic titles to be reinstated. Over the years, several attempts were rebuffed by US Olympic officials.
Those that stood between Thorpe and his rightful honors included Avery Brundage, who wasn’t just the president of the IOC but also Thorpe’s former teammate. He was quoted as having said, “ignorance is no excuse.”
The author Robert Wheeler and his wife, Florence Ridlon, were among Thorpe’s most persistent advocates. They established the Jim Thorpe Foundation in 1982 and were able to prove that Thorpe’s disqualification occurred after the time period allowed by the Olympics rules. Thanks to their hard work and the support they gained from the U.S. Congress, the IOC Executive Committee agreed to reinstate Thorpe’s medals.
However, the saga didn’t end there.
Instead of declaring him the sole winner of the events he won, the pentathlon and the decathlon, they announced him to be co-champion with Wieslander and Ferdinand Bie. This is particularly ridiculous considering that both of these athletes had always held that Thorpe was the only champion in their eyes.
Two of Thorpe’s children, Bill and Gale, were presented with commemorative medals in 1983 by the IOC. The original medals had sadly been stolen from museums and never recovered.
Recently, in July 2020, a petition started going around asking that the IOC declare Thorpe to be the sole winner.
Circulated by Bright Path Strong and backed by Pictureworks Entertainment, the IOC finally voted to make Thorpe the only winner of both the pentathlon and the decathlon on July 14, 2022.
Jim Thorpe is considered to be one of the best athletes of all time. During his life and posthumously, he has been the recipient of countless awards and honors.
Here’s just a small sampling:
According to Red Smith, a renowned sports writer:
"Thorpe was the greatest athlete of his time, maybe of any time in any land."
Let’s take a look at some of the organizations, events, and in one case, a town, that was named after the greatest athlete of all time.
Beginning in 2019, Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, started holding the Jim Thorpe Area Running Festival. A series of races are held during the event, including a 26.2-mile marathon.
Based in Oklahoma City, the Jim Thorpe Association is a charity and civic organization that is named in memory of the legendary Jim Thorpe. Since 1986, they have been awarding the Jim Thorpe Award to the top college football defensive back.
The Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame is also a part of the Jim Thorpe Association. Every year, they induct at least two athletes based on their accomplishments.
When Jim Thorpe passed away, residents of his hometown had paid to have his body returned from California by train. His funeral was held in Shawnee, Oklahoma at St. Benedict’s Catholic Church. After the ceremony, his body lay in state at Fairview Cemetery.
The original plan was to build a memorial for the legend at the athletic park in Shawnee, and the residents started raising funds for this effort. State legislators were asked for funding by local officials, but the governor vetoed it.
All the while, Thorpe’s wife had his body shipped to Pennsylvania. The rest of his family had no idea this was happening.
She had heard that there were towns in Pennsylvania that were looking for ways to attract tourism and business. According to Jack, Thorpe’s son, she had made a deal with local officials for monetary benefit.
Essentially, the towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk bought the remains of Jim Thorpe.
At his grave, they built a monument to Jim Thorpe, merged the towns, and renamed the new town Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
Jim Thorpe was buried in a town he had never once set foot in.
As you might imagine, this didn’t sit well with the rest of Thorpe’s family.
His son filed a lawsuit against the town in an effort to have his father’s remains re-interred near his family members in Oklahoma. After several years of complex legal happenings, the case was effectively brought to a close when the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear it. Thorpe’s remains are therefore still in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
Though baseball wasn't Thorpe's best sport, the fact that he could compete at the professional level in so many different sports is truly remarkable. Over his major league baseball career, Thorpe amassed:
In his minor league baseball career, he had 7 home runs, a batting average of .252, and 176 hits.
Jim Thorpe played 52 professional football games and started 37 games. He played for 12 seasons professionally.
When he played for the Carlisle Indian School, he had 53 touchdowns in 44 games, scoring 421 points. He led the nation in 1912 with 29 touchdowns and 224 points.
Thorpe won gold in both the pentathlon and decathlon in the 1912 Olympic Games held in Stockholm, Sweden.
In his obituary in the New York Times, it was written that:
“He could run the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat, the 220 in 21.8, the 440 in 50.8, the 880 in 1:57, the mile in 4:35, the 120-yard high hurdles in 15 seconds and the 220-yard low hurdles in 24 seconds. He broad-jumped 23 feet 6 inches and high-jumped 6 feet 5 inches. He pole-vaulted 11 feet, threw a shot put 47 feet 9 inches, threw the javelin 163 feet, the hammer 140 feet and the discus 136 feet.”
Located in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, there is a monument erected in the honor of Jim Thorpe at his gravesite. About 100 miles southwest of where he had attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the site of the monument contains his tomb, historical markers outlining his life story, and two statues of him posed in athletic positions.
His grave rests on soil that had been brought from Thorpe’s native Oklahoma as well as from the stadium in Sweden where he won his Olympic medals.
Considering that Jim Thorpe was so incredibly talented and versatile as an athlete, and he is considered one of the greatest of all time if not the greatest of all time, it’s not a surprise that there is a memorial built around his grave.
What is surprising, though, is that it’s located in a place that he never once visited.
The short story is that Thorpe’s third wife was left in poverty after he passed, and she was frustrated by how long it was taking his hometown to raise the necessary funds to build a memorial.
So she took matters into her own hands and essentially sold his remains to two small towns in Pennsylvania that were looking for something to draw tourists.
The two towns united and were renamed Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and his body still rests there under his monument, despite the efforts of his other family members to have his remains exhumed and relocated to his home state of Oklahoma.
The son of Jim Thorpe sued the town of Jim Thorpe in 2010 in an effort to have his father’s remains moved to Oklahoma. The suit was based on a 1990 law known as the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The law was designed to help rectify the historical plundering of Native American burial grounds.
While a federal district court agreed with him, the decision was reversed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2014.
When they tried to bring the case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, they refused to hear it. For now, that’s where the story ends, and his body remains in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.
Titled Man of Bronze in the UK, this film was produced by Warner Bros. in 1951 and was directed by Michael Curtiz. Thorpe was played by Burt Lancaster and the story was a biographical look at the life of the incredible athlete.
The film Bright Path: The Jim Thorpe Story, will be produced by Angelina Jolie and star Martin Sensmeier as the incredibly talented Thorpe. Jolie has stated that she has already spent time with Bill Thorpe and that she will be working with the Thope family and the Tribes will creating the film.
Partnering with Indian Country to create the film, the filmmakers say they are dedicated to telling the authentic story.
There’s a lot of excitement and hype around this film, but there’s no known release date as of yet.
If you're looking for a solid summary of the life and achievements of Jim Thorpe, this is a great source. Interviewing people knowledgeable about Thorpe and using old letters to substantiate the book's claims, this is a well-researched text about his life.
Some people consider this to be the definitive biography of Jim Thorpe. Highly detailed, this is a good book for individuals that are looking for a thoroughly-researched look at the entire life of the American icon.
This is another well-researched biography about the legend Jim Thorpe. Wheeler was a driving force behind Thorpe's medals being reinstated-- Sports Illustrated credits him with primary responsibility for his Olympic god medals being restored in 1982.
This narrative nonfiction book by Lars Anderson takes a look at one of the greatest contests in the history of college football. In a classic David vs. Goliath matchup that pits Jim Thorpe against future president Dwight D. Eisenhower, this is a tremendous story that will delight Jim Thorpe fans, football lovers, and American history buffs alike.
Over the years, a lot of books have been written about Jim Thorpe. Here are some other titles you might want to check out:
The story of Jim Thorpe is a wonderful way for children to learn about overcoming obstacles, the history of sports, and the difficulties faced by Native Americans in the early twentieth century.
Here are some of the books about Jim Thorpe written for children:
In short, Jim Thorpe was famous for being a truly incredible and versatile athlete. He is thought to have been one of the best athletes of all time, if not the best athlete of all time.
As the first Native American that won gold for the U.S. at the Olympics, he quickly became a national icon and hero. On top of dominating in track and field, Thorpe played baseball, football, and basketball.
Jim Thorpe competed on the American track and field team at the 1912 Olympics. He also played baseball, football, and basketball professionally. As an indication of his all-around athletic talent, he even briefly considered playing professional hockey.
Jim Thorpe didn’t just play for one team, he played for a huge handful of teams in several professional sports.
He played on:
Jim Thorpe was born in what is now Oklahoma near Prague, Indian Territory. At the time, the land was that of the Sac and Fox Nation.
Some accounts say Jim Thorpe was 5'11" while others call him 6'1". As you might imagine, his weight varied over the years, but it is said that he was 185 pounds when he competed in the Olympic games.
To help you get a picture of the man himself, during the Stockholm games he had a 42-inch chest, a 32-inch waist, and 24-inch thighs.
Jim Thorpe was a tribal member of the Sac and Fox Nation. Forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1870s, this tribe was originally from the Lake Michigan and Lake Huron area.
There are two other Sac and Fox tribes, which are the Sac and Fox Nation of Missouri in Kansas and Nebraska and the Sac and Fox Tribe of the Mississippi in Iowa.
At the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden, Jim Thorpe won the gold medal in both the pentathlon and the decathlon.
Jim Thorpe was stripped of his medals because the IOC and AAU were confronted with the fact that he had briefly been paid to play baseball. Based on the strict rules about amateurism at the time that barred professionals from competing in the Olympics, they took his medals away and removed his title as the winner of both the pentathlon and the decathlon.
Yes– but not until thirty years after his death. His medals were reinstated in the early 1980s. However, it wasn’t until 2022 that he was named the sole winner of the pentathlon and the decathlon rather than a co-winner.
The total points Thorpe won at the 1912 Olympics amounted to 8,412.95 out of a possible 10,000. This was 688 more points than the second-place finisher, Swede Hugo Wieslander. It would take four more Olympics for anyone to beat this score.
Of course, it's also notable that he was the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the U.S.
When he played on Carlisle's football team, he ran 1,869 yards on 191 attempts, helping to lead the team to a 12-1-1 record.
Jim Thorpe didn't retire from professional sports until he was 41. In his later life, he appeared in a number of films, usually in Westerns as an American Indian.
He also worked a number of different jobs, including a security guard, doorman and bouncer, construction worker, and ditch digger.
Thorpe even had a brief stint in the Merchant Marines during WWII.
Unfortunately, he struggled with poverty and chronic alcoholism in his later life until his death in 1953.
In 1950, Thorpe was hospitalized for lip cancer. He also suffered from chronic alcoholism. Thorpe had three heart attacks in his life, the third of which was fatal. He passed away at his trailer home in Lomita, California on March 29, 1953.
While there are different stories about Jim Thorpe's mismatched shoes at the Olympics, the consensus is that he won a gold medal wearing two different shoes-- one too big and one too small.
According to Bob Wheeler, author of Jim Thorpe: The World's Greatest Athlete, Thorpe's shoes went missing just a couple of minutes before the decathlon's 1500-meter race.
Remarkably, this didn't shut Thorpe down.
He borrowed one shoe from a teammate and found the other in the garbage.
It's incredible in its own right that he forged forward with totally inadequate gear. He had to squeeze his foot into his teammate's shoe, and wear extra socks to make the shoe fit that he found in the trash.
To make the story even more insane, though, he still won the race.
Thorpe was an incredible being-- he was said to have "moved like a breeze" and with "a kind of ease in his gait that is hard to describe. Equilibrium with no strictures."
To me, Jim Thorpe was way bigger than sports. His is a story of facing tremendous obstacles and overcoming them. In American society, he became a symbol of the injustice that Native Americans faced.
He is the epitome of the notion that no matter what troubles you face in life, you can overcome them. Born without U.S. citizenship because he was raised as a Native American, Thorpe climbed his way up the ladder to become a tremendously famous American icon.
Though more than a century has passed since his Olympic victories, the story of Jim Thorpe is truly timeless.
This story is incredibly powerful to me, so I wanted to share it with you. Feel free to learn more about me and my projects here.
After spending my entire life in Arkansas, in 2020 I finally made good on my life-long goal and moved to the great state of Texas. It’s abundantly clear to me that this was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in terms of both my finances and my lifestyle, and I feel compelled to share what I’ve learned so far about Texas living 101.
I could go on and on about the best parts of being a Texan. From the low cost of living and rapidly appreciating housing market to the rich history and warm climate, it's no surprise to me that hundreds of thousands of people move here every year.
Of course, any place is going to have its downsides and there are definitely both pros and cons of living in Texas. If you're considering moving here, you'll want to have a clear sense of both what you'll be gaining and what you could be giving up, depending on where you're moving from.
So, without further ado, let's dive in and take a look at the best and worst things about living in Texas from my perspective.
With inflation rising out of control and many coastal cities outrageously expensive, the low cost of living in Texas is a major pro. When the cost of living in the US as a whole is considered a 100, Texas ranks at 93.9. If you’re moving to Texas from a high-cost of living state, you’ll be able to achieve the same standard of living for less.
With so many people moving to Texas, it’s no surprise that the housing market is booming in the state. In 2020, I bought my home for $640k. In just two years, its value has risen to more than $1 million. While skyrocketing home prices across the country are expected to slow with rising interest rates and inflation, Texas is still going strong. In fact, while national demand for housing has started to decline, demand in Texas has continued to accelerate.
If asset protection is important to you (as, frankly, it probably should be,) Texas is one of the best states to live in the entire country. Texas Homestead Law protects your home if creditors are coming after you, and there are a number of personal property exemptions in the state as well.
By exploring the rest of my blog, you'll find that I'm a big proponent of the stealth wealth lifestyle and taking asset protection seriously. You can learn about more wealth protection strategies here.
For people moving from highly-taxed states like California or New York, the fact that there’s no income tax in Texas is likely a huge relief. There are only nine states in the country that have absolutely no income tax.
That being said, the state has to collect its money somehow. You’ll find that property taxes and sales taxes are high in Texas. Regardless, the Lone Star State is still considered to be one of the ten U.S. states with the lowest overall state-local tax burdens.
Texas is so enormous that there really is a wide range of lifestyles that the state supports. Want to live in a big, bustling city? No problem. Looking for a more laidback, small-town vibe? We’ve got that too.
There are a bunch of great options if you want to live outside of the biggest cities in Texas. A number of areas with a small-town feel that still have plenty of amenities have been growing quickly, including San Marcos, Wavo, and New Braunfels.
If cities are more your style, you’ll be happy in Texas, too. Four of the ten largest cities in the U.S. by population are right here in Texas (Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin), but there are also plenty of options when it comes to small- and mid-sized cities like El Paso and Arlington.
When it comes to state history, there’s no shortage of fascinating rabbit holes to dive into when you learn about Texas. The first European settlers in the state were Spanish missionaries, who founded San Antonio in 1718. It remained sparsely populated until after the Revolutionary War and the War of Mexican Independence due to hostility from the native population. Once the Mexican government was established, settlers from the U.S. began claiming land in the region.
There was a lot of friction in these early days due to the resulting population explosion and tension between American and Mexican residents. In 1836, the Texas Republic was formed after a number of small insurrections and finally the Texas Revolution.
The newly formed nation only lasted a few short years due to incursions by Mexican troops. In 1845, Texas negotiated with the United States to join the union.
The rest, as they say, is history. When you move to Texas, you’ll have no shortage of historical sites to explore. Some of the best spots any history buff will want to check out are:
Texas is so huge that there is an enormous diversity of ecosystems all within its borders. Even if you’re living in a dense urban area, you’re never terribly far from some incredible natural environments. Home to two national parks and 89 state parks, natural areas, and historic sites, the Lone Star State also has five state forests and two state arboretums.
It’s worth noting, though, that Texas has a lot less BLM land than other neighboring, western states. For people that love to head out to the desert to camp on the weekends, Texas isn’t as great as places like Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah.
After moving from the incredible scenery of the Ozarks, I have definitely had to adjust to the environment of Texas. Eastern Texas is greener and lusher than western Texas (which is dry and, in many places, a desert.) If living in a treed environment is important to you, you'll want to stick to the east side of the state.
If you’re moving from a place with cold, seemingly endless winters, you’ll love the year-round warm climate of Texas. While snow does occasionally fall in the state, and freak cold spells do occur, you can usually bank on the weather being pleasantly warm.
Pleasant, that is, until the summers. When we get into the downsides of living in Texas we’ll talk about the sweltering summers. In general, though, the statewide annual temperature average in the state is 65 degrees. Since the state is so enormous and there are a lot of different types of environments in Texas, you’ll definitely want to check out the local averages and climate before moving.
For example, Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston all frequently rank on lists of the hottest cities in the US. While the Texas Panhandle doesn’t really register as “cold” on any lists, it certainly has the coolest summers, on average, out of the entire state.
If you're moving from a place with harsh winters and you're sick of waking up at 5 am to shovel out your car, the mild winters of Texas will definitely be a pleasant change of pace.
Texas is the second most diverse state in the US, according to a study from WalletHub. This study analyzed all fifty states in terms of the ethnic, racial, economic, and cultural diversity of their residents.
The Lone Star State ranked second in linguistic diversity, fourth in racial and ethnic diversity, and third in industry diversity.
If you move here, you'll also find that there's a lot of diversity when it comes to culture and politics. Though Texas has a reputation as a conservative state, there are definitely some areas that are much more liberal. This helps create a healthy balance where there is something for everyone, and you don't have to worry about falling into a self-perpetuating echo chamber.
Whether you want to further your education or your career, Texas offers tons of opportunities.
With the second-largest economy in the US by GDP, Texas is home to six of the largest 50 companies in the Fortune 500. Though Texas comes in second place to California when analyzed by GDP, it actually grossed more money than both California and New York combined in exports in 2017.
There are a lot of different industries that are booming in Texas, including:
With a large and diverse economy, thanks to our large population, thriving cities, and abundance of natural resources, Texas is a great place to start your career, further your career, or benefit from the many leading centers of higher education in the state.
Are you more of an entrepreneur that a careerist? Not a problem at all, in fact, you'll love it here. With fewer government regulations than many other states, Texas is decidedly pro-business. With more than 50 billionaires calling Texas home, anyone who wants to make their own way will appreciate the business-friendly environment of the state.
I could write a whole book about the pros of living in Texas, but for now, I'll just add a few additional reasons why I absolutely love living here.
One huge pro is that there are a number of major international airports in the state. This makes it super easy to get anywhere in the world without the trip to the airport itself being a huge hassle.
Another great thing about Texas is that it's a major hub for sports and there are tons of entertainment options when you're within a reasonable distance from one of the cities.
Lastly, a cherry on top of living in Texas is that it has some of the lowest electricity costs in the U.S. Natural gas prices are also on the low end at the national level, and Texas has the fourth-best gasoline prices in the states.
I seriously love living in Texas, but any place is going to have some downsides. Moving to Texas has been a lifelong dream of mine, and I have no regrets. There’s no reason to have rose-colored glasses, though. Here are some of the disadvantages I've noticed while living in Texas.
There’s really no getting around it: Texas is hot in the summer. Since the state is so big, you can experience dry, desert-like summers in west Texas and extremely humid summers on the east side. In fact, there is a distinct line that separates the state known as the dry line or Marfa front.
Regardless of the type of heat, one of the definite downsides of living in Texas are the sweltering summers.
Another thing that people considering moving to Texas will want to know about is the traffic. This doesn’t just mean that getting from point A to point B in the populated cities can be a headache, it also means that there are more car accidents here than less traffic-ridden places.
Though the overall tax burden is really pretty good for Texas, and the lack of income tax is a huge win, the high property taxes and sales tax rate are worth mentioning. The property taxes are assessed by local county assessors on 100% of the appraised value, and the average effective property tax rate is about 1.8%. This makes it the state with the seventh-highest property taxes in the entire country.
The sales tax in Texas is also fairly steep at 6.25%. That being said, there are a lot of states where the sales tax is higher, tying Illinois and Massachusetts for thirteenth place when it comes to U.S. states with the highest property taxes.
One report that was published in 2019 from The Commonwealth Fund found that Texas ranked 49th when it comes to health care access and affordability. One of the primary reasons that it received such a poor ranking was that Texas hasn't expanded Medicaid eligibility.
Depending on which area of Texas you're considering moving to, some of the types of severe weather that impact the state might not need to be at the top of your "things to worry about" list. For example, Texas is exposed to hurricanes every year, but by far the most vulnerable region is the eastern section along the Gulf.
Other types of severe weather conditions that can occur in Texas include flooding, tornadoes, extreme thunderstorms, and wildfires. When you've zeroed in on a region you're interested in, you'll want to look more closely at the types of severe weather you might experience.
It would be hard to write an article about the pros and cons of living in Texas without mentioning the power grid failure in 2021 that made international news. While issues with the grid are rare, the event definitely made it clear what it means to be the only state in the continental U.S. with our own power grid.
Another thing worth mentioning is crime. As with pretty much anywhere else in America, how safe Texas is has everything to do with precisely where you are. As is common in the U.S, the most dangerous areas in Texas are typically neighborhoods inside larger cities where there is high unemployment, low income, and lack of quality housing.
The two most populous states in the country are California and Texas. While California has long been hailed as “The Land of Milk and Honey,” people have been leaving California in droves for other states in recent years. In fact, more people have left California than have moved to the state since the 1990s.
People are leaving the state for a lot of reasons, including:
The exodus from California has meant that other states have been receiving Golden State residents. The states that have been receiving the most California residents in recent years are:
There are a lot of reasons that Texas wins out in the competition with California. Some of the most compelling arguments in favor of the Lone Star State, in my mind, include:
For anyone that’s interested in building wealth over time, it’s pretty much a no-brainer when you compare Texas and California.
When you’ve started looking at moving to Texas, it can get pretty overwhelming to decide where to begin. Texas is really made up of seven distinct regions, each of which has its own geographical features, attractions, culture, and more.
In far west Texas, you’ll find Big Bend Country. This is the only spot in all of Texas where you’ll find real mountains, and it’s also home to one of the most well-known national parks in the US– Big Bend National Park.
The largest city in this region is El Paso, and otherwise, you’ll mostly find smaller cities and towns that are pretty spread out. Arguably the most remote part of the state and perhaps also the most beautiful. If you’re looking for big-city living, this probably isn’t the spot for you.
Up in the northwestern part of Texas are the Panhandle Plains. The second-largest canyon in the U.S. is found here (Palo Duro Canyon), and the best-known cities in the region are Amarillo and Lubbock.
Other than some deep canyons carved by rivers and tributaries, the Panhandle-Plains are mostly flat grasslands and plains without many trees.
South of the Panhandle-Plains and east of Big Bend Country, Hill Country is pretty much in the center of the Lone Star State. With hilly terrain, steep canyons, springs, and underground caves and lakes, this is a much greener part of the state than the two regions we’ve discussed so far.
Home to Austin, the state’s capital, and a number of other small cities and towns, this is a bustling and thriving region.
South of Hill Country and bordering the Rio Grande River, a big chunk of this area is dry and covered in thorny brush and grasses. San Antonio is the biggest city in the area which is home to plenty of attractions including theme parks, sporting events, historical landmarks, and more.
Within this region, you can find the Lower Rio Grande Valley, which is home to subtropical woodlands, palm trees, and a lot of beautiful tropical birds.
Including the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Waco, College Station, and a lot of other cities and towns, the Prairies and Lakes region is located in north-central and central Texas.
If you’re interested in living in a diverse region that offers the ability to spend time in a major American city and also hop out to small-town America to go antiquing, this might be a good choice for you.
Piney Woods is the easternmost region of Texas. This is a more remote area, with the “big” cities being Huntsville, Conroe, and Tyler. There are also a number of small towns that have plenty of charm and fascinating histories.
The landscape here is made up of lush meadows, forests, streams, and quaint historic towns. Home to four national forests, this is a popular place for visitors that want to experience the great outdoors.
Stretching along the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Coast region reaches all the way from the Mexican border to Louisiana. The cities found in this area include Houston, Corpus Christi, Galveston, and South Padre Island.
In addition to the cities, there are a number of charming smaller towns in the region.
So now that you’re convinced that you want to live in Texas, where the heck are you going to live? There really is something for everyone here, but you’ll want to consider what you want to prioritize to help narrow down the options.
There’s no shortage of small towns in the state of Texas. Some of the best small towns to live in include:
When you're in your 20s, you're probably looking for a different type of living environment than you will be when you're married with kids. Unless you're specifically hoping to move to a small town in Texas for some solitude and space, you'll probably want to look into Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. If you're looking to tap into some of the cowboy vibe of Texas, check out the Dallas/Fort Worth area.
When you're moving with kids to Texas, you want to make sure that your new home suits everyone in the family. Some of the most family-friendly places in the state I'd recommend checking out include:
Houston is the biggest city in Texas and the fourth-largest city in the US by population. It’s also impressively large by area, ranking at number nine for the whole nation. This means that you have a whole lot of options when you’re looking for neighborhoods in Space City.
Some of my suggestions for Houston areas to live in are:
The third-biggest city in Texas by both population and area, the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex experienced the largest population growth of all metro areas in the U.S. between July 2020 and July 2021, according to the Census Bureau.
Between 2021 and 2022, more people moved to San Antonio than anywhere else in the country. Some of the best neighborhoods in the Alamo City include:
Another fast-growing city in Texas, the numeric population growth in Austin ranks fourth in the U.S. between July 2020 and July 2021. A word of warning to people considering moving to the capital city: Austin has long been famous for its beloved weirdness. There is a lot of local concern that this has been diluted by the rapid growth of the city, and anyone that wants to move to the Austin they visited in the 90s will likely find it be radically different than it once was.
That being said, let's check out some of the best areas to live in Austin:
There is something truly unique about Texas, and I am so glad that I finally made the move to this incredible state after dreaming of being a Texan my whole life. Everyone is different, though, so it's important to identify what is and isn't important to you when considering making the move.
If you're desperate to be in a warm climate, a business-friendly atmosphere, and a state with no income taxes, Texas should definitely be on the top of your list. If you're the type of person that starts to get uncomfortable when the temperature sneaks above 65, on the other hand, and you prefer condensed metro areas to sprawling ones, you might find Texas to require compromises you aren't willing to make.
Moving to Texas has been so beneficial to me that I feel driven to share what I've learned so far to help others make the right decision for them. If you're wondering who the heck I am, be sure to check out my projects and more about me here.
Most parents want to offer their children a better life than they had. If you’re interested in systematic wealth building, you’re probably curious about how to build generational wealth. After all, money is a tool that can allow your children and grandchildren to have the ability to lead meaningful and impactful lives.
Generational wealth isn’t usually something that happens by accident, though. Even if you save up an incredible fortune, it’s all too possible for future generations to not only squander the wealth, but also suffer tremendously because of it.
So what is generational wealth, exactly, and how can you build it? And, perhaps most importantly, what can you do to avoid the negative potential outcomes of offering a fortune to your descendants that they didn’t work to create on their own?
Let’s do a deep dive into everything you need to know about generational wealth to help set up the future generations of your family for success.
The term generational wealth refers to accumulated wealth that is passed down from one generation to the next. This fortune doesn’t have to just come in the form of cash, but can also include:
Generational wealth can be passed down after your death in the form of an inheritance, but it can also be shared with your children and grandchildren while you’re still alive.
When you build generational wealth, you are granting the future generations of your family a significant financial advantage. The goal isn’t to create an outcome where your kids never have to work a day in their lives and suffer from severe affluenza, but instead to open up a lot of possibilities for your kids and their kids.
When you create generational wealth, it means that your children, your grandchildren, and so on, can begin their adult lives on a higher rung of the hierarchy of needs. If you’ve ever lived paycheck to paycheck, you know just how costly and time-consuming it is to be poor. In the best-case scenario, generational wealth can allow your progeny to accomplish more in their lives than you were able to because they started out with a huge advantage.
If you want to have the ability to truly impact the world, creating generational wealth is one of the most effective ways to do so. While rich people can get a bad rap in this day and age, money is definitely one of the most powerful tools when it comes to actually creating positive change in your community and the world as a whole.
When you create generational wealth that your children and their children can use, you are giving them the gift of freedom. Money is a resource that allows people to pursue their dreams and affords them security in life.
If you work a regular 9-5 job, you might be wondering if that will be enough to build generational wealth. The answer to this question obviously depends on what you have in mind when it comes to how much wealth you want to leave your children, what your income is, how many years you plan on working, your cost of living, and much more.
That being said, building substantial generational wealth is probably not possible with a traditional career alone without taking on extreme measures when it comes to saving and investment.
Let’s take a look at some of the biggest names in generational wealth to paint a clearer picture of what I’m talking about.
Some of the most recognizable family names out there certainly didn’t accrue generational wealth working standard W-2 jobs.
John D. Rockefeller is believed to be one of the richest men that has ever lived, despite the fact that he started Standard Oil all the way back in 1870. The fortune he built initially is now divided among 174 different heirs and funds a massive amount of charitable and philanthropic work.
The Walton Family is said to have a net worth of about $235 billion between the seven heirs to Sam Walton’s fortune. This massive generational wealth was built through the Walmart retail empire, a public company that has a market cap of more than $395 billion.
While H.L. Hunt might not be as much of a household name as that of Rockefeller or Walmart, the Hunt family fortune is nothing to scoff at. Supposedly using poker winnings to secure title to a big chunk of the East Texas Oil Field (one of the largest deposits of oil in the world,) the massive wealth of the Hunt family definitely wasn’t built by showing up at the office at 8:45 and clocking out at 5:15 alone.
I could go on, but the point is that the biggest players in the world of generational wealth were entrepreneurs, not employees. While you absolutely can build up a nice inheritance for your children through aggressive savings from a traditional career, building truly significant wealth usually takes something more than a regular job.
Of course, there’s a huge range between leaving your children in debt and building up a Rockefeller-style fortune. You don’t have to be a billionaire to create generational wealth that can have a huge impact on the lives of your descendants for generations to come.
The deeper you get into the examples of families that have generational wealth, though, you will start to notice a pattern.
In short, entrepreneurship of one form or another seems to be the most common thread between examples of family wealth. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to start the next big social media platform, though that certainly wouldn’t hurt.
That being said, most of the world’s wealthiest people have a number of different irons in the fire. Some other wealth creation methods you’ll want to consider include:
If you are starting from zero or worse, (that student loan debt can really be a downer,) it’s worth noting that nearly 68% of the world’s richest people are considered ‘self-made.’ Don’t assume that you can’t build generational wealth within you’re lifetime without a huge inheritance of your own– it is completely within your power to build wealth from the ground up.
Now that we’ve taken a look at the basics of generational wealth, let’s hop into how to build it.
One of the most important steps to building generational wealth is about something way more valuable than money– your mindset. In order to accrue assets that you can pass on to future generations, you’re going to need a mindset that allows you to pursue long-term goals on a playing field that offers the opportunity for big gains.
Of course, investing is also essential to building generational wealth. If you’ve got a big pile of cash and you bury it under the oak tree in your backyard for your grandkids to find, they’re probably going to be pretty disappointed. (As an example, $5,000 in 1950 is the equivalent of about $60k in 2022.)
Not only do you need to invest your money to make sure that it maintains its value in face of inflation, but investing is going to be a big part of how you make your money work for you.v
Another way that you can generate wealth is through business ownership. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to quit your day job if you don’t want to– it’s definitely possible to use your savings from your career to get a business off the ground as an investment.
Not only can a business help you to build your wealth through income generation, but a business is also an asset that you can pass down to future generations. If your great-great-great grandkids don’t want to work in the family business, no problem. All that means is that they have a saleable asset.
One of the biggest expenses you’ll have throughout your life is taxes. If you go through your life without tax-advantaged strategies, you’re taking money right out of the hands of your descendants and handing it over to Uncle Sam. If you know anything about compound interest, you’ll understand exactly how negatively impactful that can be on generational wealth.
Diversifying your income streams allows many of the same benefits you can receive from diversifying your investment portfolio. If you have all of your eggs in one basket, you’re putting yourself at a much greater risk than if you’ve got them spread out in a bunch of different baskets.
No matter how stable your business or job seems now, we ultimately never know what’s going to happen in life. When you have a number of different income-producing endeavors, it means the sky doesn’t fall if something unexpected occurs.
Building wealth doesn’t do you much good if you spend it all on useless material objects. I’m not saying you should find yourself a nice spot in the nearest shanty-town, but I am definitely a big proponent of avoiding the trappings of consumerism.
In fact, I believe wholeheartedly in living a stealth wealth lifestyle. Not only does it keep you safe from spending your money on things you don’t need, but it also can be a valuable asset when it comes to protecting your wealth. To learn more about why you might want to keep your wealth a secret, check out my recent post on “stealth wealth”.
One of the most important steps you can take towards maintaining generational wealth is investing in your children. A lot of people assume that this mostly means sending their kids to college. While a college education might be the right choice for your kid, it is not the only way to obtain success in life and sometimes is an expensive derailment from the type of education that is most beneficial to sustainable generational wealth.
You are the one that can begin the cycle of generational wealth, and you can certainly set things up to avoid your children blowing their inheritance in one crazy year. That being said, without proper education about personal finance and wealth, your descendants will likely make costly mistakes and might even suffer from the afflictions that can come along with being rich.
Beyond teaching your kids about personal finance, you’ll also want to strive to give them the skills they need to grow into responsible, mature, competent, and capable adults. These essential tools are not something you should expect are taught in classrooms, and it takes deliberate effort on the part of the parent to create this outcome. If your children are growing up wealthy, you will likely need to work extra hard to help your children learn the lessons that you learned through the hardships you encountered on your way to success.
You don’t want to learn the hard way that even the most immense fortunes can be squandered quickly if you aren’t careful. Some of the most successful and wealthy people in history have filed for bankruptcy (Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, and Nicolas Cage, to name a few.)
Even if you aren’t going on wild spending sprees, how much wealth you can tuck away for your kids has a lot to do with deliberating using wealth protection strategies.
Passing down generational wealth isn’t something you want to leave to chance. Let’s take a look at how exactly to pass down generational wealth.
One of the most essential pieces of the generational wealth puzzle is having an estate plan. Not only can it help to minimize or even eliminate estate taxes but it can also help set up safeguards against your hard-earned fortune disappearing due to a few crazy years of excess on the part of your progeny.
When creating an estate plan, it’s a good idea to work with financial professionals that can help you work out the best options for your particular circumstance. That being said, some aspects of estate planning include:
By creating a thorough estate plan, you can avoid a lot of drama and chaos after your death. The last thing you want is for the wealth you worked so hard for to tear your family apart.
It’s all too common for parents to not talk to their children about money and personal finance. This is a big mistake and can end up leaving your descendants unequipped to deal with the fortune they inherit. If you want to create wealth that lasts for generations, go out of your way to teach your kids how to build, grow, and manage money.
Life insurance can also be used to pass your wealth down. If you end up dying unexpectedly, your spouse and children have a safety net. On top of that, it’s an affordable tool you can use to build generational wealth that offers tax advantages.
There are some pretty dire statistics out there about generational wealth which you’ll definitely want to familiarize yourself with. Most notable, 70% of wealthy families are estimated to lose their wealth by the second generation. Even if your kids don’t blow your fortune, there’s a 90% chance that their children will.
While an issue like this is obviously complicated, one of the most common reasons that generational wealth is squandered is that inheriting generations didn’t have to work for the wealth they have. When you build wealth that can be passed down, you likely experienced a lot of hardships along the way that required discipline, hard work, and sacrifice to overcome.
The second generation might have the opportunity to see how hard their parents worked to build wealth and, even though life was easier for them financially, were still able to understand all of the hard work and sacrifice that went into creating the family fortune. They might have grown up in a fairly frugal environment and been able to learn from their parents about making smart financial decisions.
The third generation, however, is much farther away from the hard work and struggle that it took to build the wealth they benefit from. In this situation, it’s all too easy to assume that the family coffers are a bottomless pit of gold. These people really might not have any idea how to handle money or just how much effort went into creating it in the first place.
When you aim to build generational wealth, you likely aren’t hoping that your kids will grow up spoiled, out-of-touch, and extravagant. You probably particularly don’t want them to end up in a heartbreaking riches-to-rags story that involves a life of excess that results in bankruptcy and destitution.
Luckily, it doesn’t have to be that way.
There’s a common saying that is very appropriate to understanding how family wealth is lost only a few generations down the line. It refers to a cyclical pattern that can be broken down into four steps before looping back around to step number one:
Rinse, repeat.
To avoid this all-too-common sequence, you’re going to want to purposefully instill the value of struggle in your children. It’s natural to want to give your kids everything in life and never let them feel uncomfortable even for a moment. If you shield them from ever having to face hardships and struggle, though, you’re actually doing them a major disservice.
I’m not saying you need to drop your five-year-old on a desert island and send them off with just a pocket knife. Being put in a position to deal with a hardship that is too far out of your comfort zone can sometimes be just as damaging as never facing hardships at all.
The value of struggle can be learned in an incredibly diverse variety of ways– through sports, games, jobs, school, relationships, hobbies, business endeavors, and travel, just to name a few. The goal is to support or help facilitate challenging situations for your kids so that they can see the personal gain and growth that comes from struggle firsthand.
We think of struggle as negative, but it’s ultimately one of the most important ingredients to achieving personal growth and success.
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
If you’re not yet convinced, let’s just take a look at a handful of some of the benefits of struggling:
I could go on and on. While too much struggle can obviously be devastating to an individual, you might be surprised just how resilient, strong, and capable your children are in the face of challenges. When your children learn the valuable lessons of struggling, mistakes, failure, and success, you’ll find that they are much better equipped for the “real world” when it’s time for them to go off on their own.
If you dump a cool $20 million in cash on your kids on their eighteenth birthday, there’s a good chance you’re playing with fire. Of course, how they handle this type of situation will have a lot to do with how much personal finance education they’ve had and whether or not they understand the value of money. However, even the most responsible person can start to act erratically when they see all those zeros in their bank account.
There are a lot of different ways you can go about creating criteria future generations need to meet before they have access to wealth. Some examples include:
The ability to pass money on to your children is something you should be truly proud of. That being said, it’s important that you don’t project the lessons you’ve learned onto your children and assume that they will be as diligent in building and maintaining wealth as you have been.
Of course, it’s generally not a good idea to use financial incentives to get your kids to be the way you want them to be. For example, if your kid has always wanted to run their own restaurant, it probably won’t go well if you only allow them to receive their inheritance if they graduate from medical school. You want your wealth to support future generations in their ability to achieve their goals and ambitions, not cause major personal and relationship issues in your family.
Sure, your kids don’t have to work or pay for any of their own stuff. If you just buy them everything they want without them having to do anything for it, it’s going to be hard for them to learn the value of money.
I don’t care if you have one trillion dollars in the bank– make your kid get a regular job. Even working at the local pizza place a few hours a week can go a long way in teaching your children priceless lessons.
Beyond your kids learning that money is something you receive through offering something of value to others, it’s important to teach them that pretty much everything costs money. It isn’t enough to constantly harp on your kids about how expensive their back-to-school wardrobe was or how much you spent sending them to private school. In order for them to really learn, they’ll have to use their own hard-earned money to make some meaningful purchases.
There are a lot of different ways you can go about this. You might have your kid be responsible for saving up and buying their first car, pay for their own clothes beyond the basic essentials, or let them foot the bill when they go to the movies with their friends.
Having financial wealth can offer a lot of opportunities in life, but it can also be a curse. Money is just a tool that can be used in positive and negative ways. At the end of the day, it’s going to be hard to prevent the downsides of generational wealth if your kids don’t understand that material objects and a luxury lifestyle don’t automatically result in a happy or satisfying life.
I’ve actually written at length about the fact that you need more than money to lead a meaningful life. Check out my article on the different types of wealth to learn more.
At this point, you’ve heard enough of what I have to say about generational wealth. Let’s check in with what some of the greatest (and, in some cases, wealthiest) minds throughout history have said about family fortunes and wealth in general.
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.” – Epictetus
“The poorest man I know is the man who has nothing but money.” – John D. Rockefeller
“We need to make a game out of earning money. There is so much good we can do with money. Without it, we are bound and shackled and our choices become limited.” — Bob Proctor
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
"Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.” – Epictetus
“Industry, perserverance, and frugality make fortune yield.” – Benjamin Franklin
“The philosophy of the rich and the poor is this: the rich invest their money and spend what is left. The poor spend their money and invest what is left.” — Robert Kiyosaki
“The advantages of riches remains with him who procured them, not with the heir.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Every person who invests in well-selected real estate in a growing section of a prosperous community adopts the surest and safest method of becoming independent, for real estate is the basis of wealth.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Material abundance without character is the surest way to destruction.” – Thomas Jefferson
Building generational wealth is within reach for anyone that is seriously invested in systematic wealth building. That being said, you will need to employ the same thoughtfulness, hard work, diligence, and planning in passing your wealth on to future generations as you did in creating that wealth in the first place.
When you create a family fortune, you are giving your descendants a tremendous gift. However, if they don’t have a good head on their shoulders in relation to money, it honestly might do more harm than good. It’s therefore essential that you help your kids learn how to create and lead meaningful lives. A part of the toolkit you’ll want to pass on to them will be a thorough education in personal finance, but that simply isn’t enough if you don’t help them learn how the value of struggle, the power of a growth-oriented mindset, and the reality that you need more than money to lead a worthwhile life.
Every week I post a new article about wealth building to share some of the valuable lessons I’ve learned over the years. You can learn more about me and my projects here.
According to a number of recent studies, an increase in income can actually lead to more stress and less happiness. Winning the lottery doesn’t appear to create the perfect life any more predictably than earning a higher salary, either. In fact, getting rich quick can leave people suffering from something called sudden wealth syndrome.
Before you start playing the world’s smallest violin for people out of feigned sympathy, you might want to consider the negative ways that a windfall could impact your life.
Why would someone who won a $315 million lottery have been quoted as saying “I wish that we had torn the ticket up”? The reason is that, for all the problems that money can solve, it is also very capable of creating a lot of new ones that are hard to even imagine before it happens to you.
Sudden wealth syndrome is a psychological condition (though not technically a psychological diagnosis) that can happen when someone comes into a large sum of money in a short period of time.
While many of us assume that having a surprise windfall would be the best thing that could ever happen, there are a number of potentially negative side effects that you should be aware of. A big influx of cash or assets can be shocking even when you’ve been expecting it, but it can really shake up your world if you had no idea that the wealth was heading your way.
When you have access to wealth all of a sudden, it can create a bunch of overwhelming pressures in your life. Even the most level-headed person can start making decisions they normally wouldn’t when their bank account blooms overnight, and it’s hard to anticipate how you would act if your net worth suddenly puts you in the “rich” category.
You might think that a ton of money is the answer to all of your problems. In reality, though, it can lead to extreme psychological outcomes like:
Understanding sudden wealth syndrome is essential for anyone who is working to build wealth. While some people might have a hard time feeling sympathy for someone that has money to burn, you never know with certainty how you would react to a windfall unless it happened to you.
A quick trip on the rags-to-riches roller-coaster can leave you experiencing a tremendous amount of stress and other negative psychological symptoms. It’s one thing to steadily and systematically build wealth over many decades, where you have time to adjust to your increasing net worth in small bites. Of course, people who get rich slowly can certainly fall prey to the same side effects as people who receive a windfall, but it’s particularly notable when a fortune is received in a short period of time.
Whether you know an inheritance is on its way, you expect that your side hustle might blow up and make you rich, or you have no expectation of experiencing sudden wealth, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the potential symptoms of sudden wealth syndrome.
Guilt is often described as a self-conscious emotion because it involves self-reflection. In its healthiest iteration, guilt can help us learn to not repeat mistakes we’ve made. However, it’s all too common for people to feel guilty in ways that are out of proportion to the supposed error or are even completely disconnected from any actual harm to themselves or others.
This is the case with the guilt that comes along with sudden wealth syndrome.
There are a lot of reasons why you might feel guilty after a windfall. One familiar example is if you received an inheritance after the death of a loved one. This can create mixed emotions, such as feeling like you can’t be happy to have the money because that would imply that you’re glad your relative passed away.
People who come into wealth suddenly can also feel guilty because they don’t believe they deserve the money. They look around and see other people that seem to be working harder or that appear to need the money more. Why did you get rich all of a sudden, while these other people that are seemingly more worthy of a windfall have to keep struggling? This is particularly common for people who grew up poor, but it can happen to people of all tax brackets.
There’s also a pervasive cultural concept that money is bad and so are people who have it. Someone who was wandering around complaining about the 1% just a few months ago might be overcome with incredible guilt when they find themselves a lot closer to that category.
What would you do if you found out you were about to receive an inheritance of $100k? How about $500k? What about $5 million?
Your first instinct might be to celebrate. After all, why wouldn’t you call your buddies, your parents, and your girlfriend of six months to tell them the good news? Heck, you’re rich now– it’s time to party!
Unfortunately, money can complicate even the strongest relationships, and the actual emotions you experience might be a lot different if you experienced a windfall than you think they would be.
Coming into a lot of money all of a sudden can compel people to isolate themselves from the people they know. Because getting a bunch of money can trigger a lot of self-critical emotions, you might separate yourself from others due to depressive moods or other unpleasant mental states.
If the people in your social circle aren’t well off, you might feel uncomfortable being around them with your new wealth and lifestyle. Similarly, your friends and family might create separation through envy, resentment, or jealousy.
Sudden wealth can, in short, leave you feeling really alone.
If isolation as a symptom of sudden wealth syndrome doesn’t make you nervous, perhaps this one will. Becoming rich all of a sudden can lead to paranoia in its own right, but paranoia can also result from social isolation.
People who suffer from SWS might worry, for example, that their fortune will disappear as quickly as it showed up. They also might become paranoid in regard to their relationships. The changing dynamic of their social world can create paranoia– whether their fears are real or imagined, the newly rich person might feel that their friends and family members are always trying to get a piece of the action.
Both paranoia and isolation can lead to a number of other health issues, such as insomnia, depression, or anxiety disorders.
Receiving a windfall can also leave you in a state of shock. Even if the money can seriously change your life for the better– allowing you to get out of debt, start saving for retirement, invest in new business ideas, and follow your dreams, the experience of getting a bunch of money can be shocking on just about every level.
Becoming suddenly rich can leave you feeling paralyzed. You might not have the slightest idea what to do with the money. Even the smallest spending decisions can become completely overwhelming.
Feeling numb from sudden wealth often results, at least in part, from being emotionally unprepared for all the changes that money can create. Things like the new lifestyle you can afford, increased responsibility, and the ways money changes your relationship can leave you feel shocked and dissociated.
You could also find yourself ridden with feelings of confusion and uncertainty. Regardless of how good your new wealth could be for you and your family, it’s can be downright impossible to wrap your mind around.
How you respond to a sudden fortune can depend on your background. If you grew up in a wealthy family but didn’t have access to much money until your recent windfall, you might have a place to put the experience in your mind. However, if you grew up in a family that was always living paycheck-to-paycheck, the realities of wealth might be so new and unknown that you end up resorting to self-destructive coping mechanisms.
People afflicted with SWS might start spending money excessively, make financial promises to their friends and family, or make risky investments. This, of course, can happen to people who grew up in wealthy families as well. Regardless of background, and influx of charities and other organizations giving you their attention can leave you feeling suspicious and paralyzed.
As you might imagine from all of the symptoms we’ve discussed so far, increased anxiety or even panic attacks can result from the sudden change of becoming wealthy. All of these potential psychological consequences of an overnight fortune are deeply interconnected and interrelated. For example, anxiety about the money vanishing could lead to social isolation and paranoia, or the shock of being rich can start making even the most level-headed person anxious.
Panic attacks occur when a person is overcome with unreasonable feelings of anxiety and fear that manifest themselves in physical symptoms like fast breathing, a racing heart, and excessive sweating. If you’re truly overwhelmed by your new wealth and don’t know what to do, you can also find yourself experiencing these intense waves of fear.
A play on the phrase sticker shock, ticker shock refers to a state where a person watches the stock market obsessively and experiences cycles of anxiety and depression in response to market volatility. If you invested your windfall in the stock market (or made your money that way,) it’s a little too easy to be constantly checking in on your investments.
No matter how much money you have, it’s important to never exceed your risk tolerance when investing. If you invest money that you can’t afford to lose, you’ll find yourself flinching every time there’s a slight dip in the market.
All of these other symptoms can leave you suffering from insomnia or other sleep problems. You’d think that being rich would mean you can sleep like a baby every night, but all of the new responsibilities and other related issues can leave you staring at the ceiling until the wee hours of the morning.
One of the most drastic symptoms of sudden wealth syndrome is the potential it creates for an identity crisis.
I dealt with this myself when I went from being broke and in debt to a multi-millionaire over the course of eighteen months. Even though I’d been putting my all into the projects I was working on, I was left in a state of deep confusion about who I was when one of them actually panned out in a big way.
While we might not realize it, we tend to factor our financial situation into our sense of identity. On top of that, humans typically settle into a comfort zone where they can feel in control and everything is familiar.
When you get rich quickly, it can make you question who you are and what matters to you. If it was a part of your identity that you’re working class, for example, what does it mean about who you are when your bank account says otherwise?
Even though everyone thinks they want more money than they have, having your net worth skyrocket can put you way out of your comfort zone. This can be incredibly stressful, confusing, and overwhelming.
You might think that you’d be clicking your heels and shouting from the rooftops if you got news of a $10 million inheritance, but it’s actually not that uncommon for sudden wealth to leave people with feelings of depression.
This might appear on its own or it can result from guilt, isolation, paranoia, anxiety, or any of the other symptoms of SWS.
We’ll talk about why rich people can get depressed a little later in the article. But, in short, receiving a ton of money can actually leave people feeling empty and low energy. This might be for a number of reasons, including the realization that money simply can’t fix all your problems or provide meaning in life on its own.
Money can make people start acting strange. Even if you manage to keep your cool after striking it rich, unfortunately, your friends, family, and coworkers might not be as emotionally mature.
Sudden wealth can make you isolate yourself from others, make others isolate themselves from you, or both. You might find your best friend is all of a sudden so envious of you that your relationship falls apart. Your mother might demand that you give her a chunk of your winnings. Childhood friends can start coming out of the woodwork with sob stories about medical bills and sick kids.
It really is sad but true. The reality is that an experience like this can teach you who your true friends are. That can be a pretty hard pill to swallow if you come to find that you have a lot fewer friends than you used to think.
Similarly, it can make you suspect of every new person you meet. This is particularly the case if your wealth is known to the general public.
Let’s say, for example, that you made a killing trading crypto. You didn’t think to hide this about yourself, and you jumped at the opportunity to be interviewed about your new fortune for stories that appear in the Wall Street Journal, Buzzfeed, and on NPR. In your hometown, news travels fast and everyone from your high school drama teacher to your middle school girlfriend now knows that you’re a multi-millionaire.
Maybe the attention feels good for a while, but chances are you’ll start wondering whether your popularity is resulting from the fact that everyone is hoping for a handout. You might get tangled up in the dangerous gray area between reasonable and unreasonable paranoia.
As you can see, there are a lot of ways that getting wealthy can mess up the relationships you already have in life and jeopardize your ability to make new relationships in the future.
So, now that we know what can happen to people who become suddenly wealthy, let’s take a look at some of the most common ways that a regular Joe can find themselves with deep pockets practically overnight. Remember, there are many types of wealth, but the type we're talking about here is purely financial wealth.
Even if you know that an inheritance is coming down the road, it can still be hard to grasp how it’s going to change your life if you don’t consider it carefully ahead of time. Sometimes, individuals might receive news of an inheritance that they had no idea about, which makes them ripe candidates for the symptoms of SWS.
People talk about winning the lottery as if it would solve all of their problems and change their lives for the better. However, the actual experience can be so shocking for a person that is unprepared for wealth that it can lead to a number of horrible consequences.
There are a lot of examples of lottery winners whose lives seemed to take a turn for the worse as soon as they became rich.
Take Billy Bob Harrell Jr., for example. He won $31 million dollars from the Texas Jackpot after unsuccessfully attempting to become a minister. With his winnings, he helped out his family, his church, and his parishioners. No matter how much money he gave, though, people always seemed to be asking for more.
His family life fell apart as well, with the constant demands plus some bad investments eventually leading to divorce and general family turmoil.
“Winning the lottery was the worst thing that ever happened to me.” – Billy Bob Harrell Jr.
Sadly, less than two years after Harrell had become a multi-millionaire, he committed suicide.
You can spend hours going down the rabbit hole of the sometimes tragic lives of lottery winners. If you’re interested in learning more about how destructive sudden wealth syndrome can be, there are, unfortunately, countless extreme examples out there.
The median salary for all NFL players is $860,000, which is a pretty healthy income if you ask me. For the biggest names in the game, players can receive contracts that include yearly salaries in the tens of millions of dollars.
You’d expect that, from these numbers, NFL players would be set for life.
However, statistics suggest that, within just two years of retirement, 78% of NFL players fall into severe financial distress or go bankrupt.
You can find examples of this same type of situation in the world of celebrity as a whole. People as rich and successful as Michael Jackson, Nicolas Cage, Mike Tyson, and Kim Basinger have had to file for bankruptcy.
When people start making huge amounts of money every year, it can leave them with the expectation that their bank account is bottomless. They can lose site of smart money management and fall into self-destructive (and sometimes very expensive) habits.
Other types of gambling beyond playing the lottery can also leave people with more money than they know what to do with. This is also a particularly dangerous way to become suddenly wealthy, because people can end up putting their money back into games where the odds are against them.
Sometimes people can end up with a big chunk of cash if they’ve sued someone for medical malpractice, wrongful death, or some other legal proceeding. Unfortunately, a lot of people aren’t aware of the necessary steps that should be taken to manage and protect wealth, and suffer from the symptoms of sudden wealth syndrome when they get a big payout from a lawsuit.
Whether you take investing very seriously or you engage in r/wallstreetbets style gambling, having a big win in the stock market or crypto can change your life incredibly fast. Take a look at this story from the New York Post, for example, about people who’re rich thanks to crypto. While I hope everything works out for these new millionaires, getting rich from crypto or stocks doesn’t always go well in the long run.
Of course, the symptoms of sudden wealth syndrome shouldn’t be enough to keep you from trying to systematically build wealth. However, you should learn how to avoid SWS so you don’t become another tragic story recounted on a blog.
If you come into a bunch of money, the first thing you should do is nothing.
Before you buy a new house, pay off your parents debt, or put it all into a risky investment, slow down. I mean way down.
The most important thing is to avoid making quick decisions. All those zeroes can do weird things to your brain, and even the most level-headed person can start acting erratically with new-found wealth. Put the money somewhere safe (like an insured savings account, for example) and don’t touch it until you’ve created a solid plan.
I get it. You’ve struck it rich and you want to tell everyone you know. It’s essential that you resist this urge and keep it to yourself as much as possible.
If you don’t, your friends, family, and colleagues might start acting differently when they learn you’re rich. Whether they’re giving you investing tips, asking for money, or just acting strange, letting people know about your wealth can cause a lot of problems. If you do tell the people in your inner circle about your windfall, make sure you can trust them and be sure to set clear boundaries.
Instead of telling your coworkers about your major gains, talk to an experienced financial planner. They’ll help you make a plan that protects your wealth.
To learn more about how to keep your wealth a secret, check out this article on stealth wealth.
Sometimes you can’t plan ahead for sudden wealth, but in other instances, (like an inheritance you know about,) you can. Regardless of whether or not you were able to prepare for your fortune, if you slow down and keep it quiet, you can make a plan with the help of a financial advisor.
Make sure you are keeping the big picture in mind when you make a long-term plan. Your windfall could change your life for the better if you’re smart about it, but it could also vanish if you have too narrow of a focus on how the money changes your life right now.
Discipline is key for navigating the obstacles of sudden wealth. Work on being self-aware (i.e. keep an eye on ideas that crop up about impulsive purchases or risky investments) and don’t do anything until you make a solid plan.
Once you create a plan, trust it. Don’t stray from it unless you have a very good reason to and it supports your long-term purposes.
This one is simple. If you get a windfall and you don’t have any experience as an investor, now isn’t the time to learn just how risky it can be. Don’t let your coworker talk you into putting your money into the latest meme stock– while it could work out, it could also leave you right back where you started.
Depending on how you made your money, you’re likely going to need to give some of it to Uncle Sam. You’ll want to learn about how your new fortune will be taxed so you can make sure you can foot the bill when it comes time to pay.
Regardless of whether or not you ever strike it rich overnight, educating yourself about personal finance is never a bad idea. The more you know about managing money, the more prepared you’ll be if you end up with a ton of it.
When you don’t have any money, it can feel like being rich would make all your troubles go away. If that was really the case, though, why are some rich people depressed?
There are a lot of different reasons for this, but a big one is that money is just a means and not an end in itself. While it can seriously expand your options in life, money alone won’t make life meaningful.
Having money can also lead you to:
Being rich can also leave people struggling with boredom and purposelessness. A regular person doesn’t have to question why they get out of bed and go to work in the morning– they have to in order to support themselves. For multi-millionaires or billionaires, though, motivation and purpose is necessary beyond putting food on the table.
Even though being short on cash can create a lot of tension in the family, having a high net worth isn’t necessarily a walk in the park either. Building generational wealth can be a blessing or a curse depending on how you navigate the situation, and the family turmoil it can lead to can certainly contribute to depression and other mood issues.
Then there’s also the treadmill effect to consider. Some people get caught in a cycle where the more the make, the more they spend. They are victims of lifestyle creep and rather than money being the solution to all their problems, it actually leaves them with a more complicated life.
A few of the other reasons that rich people can be depressed include:
Wealth guilt can come in a number of different forms. These include:
If you receive a windfall, you don’t have to fall prey to Sudden Wealth Syndrome. Here are some tips to help stay stable, sane, happy, and healthy in the face of sudden wealth:
Getting rich quickly can be really overwhelming, and I know that from first hand experience. If your net worth has dramatically increased and you’re feeling like you’re in over your head, feel free to reach out and I’d be happy to give you some pointers. Don’t worry, I don’t have an angle here and I’m not trying to sell you anything. I’m just all too aware of how isolating it can feel to jump up a few tax brackets practically overnight.
Simply understanding the potential pitfalls of sudden wealth can go a long way in avoiding the risks associated with a windfall. I feel motivated to share what I’ve learned over the years in the hopes that others will be able to avoid the mistakes that I made along the way.
Who am I to be telling you how to deal with a big influx of cash, anyway? You can learn more about me and my projects here.
If you’re like most people, the idea of being rich automatically conjures images of infinity pools with incredible ocean views, full-time house staff, elaborate estates, and private jets. Some wealthy people, though, actually keep their fortune a secret from everyone around them. The concept of living below your means even though you’ve got some serious assets to your name is known as stealth wealth.
When I made my first million at 25, I didn’t run out the door and buy a Ferrari. Actually, I didn’t even move out of my tiny, affordable apartment for another two years. When I finally did move, I ended up just moving into a cheap, blue-collar neighborhood. I've talked a bit about my background on the bio page.
You might wonder what the point of amassing a fortune is if you aren’t going to blow through it, but there are actually tons of benefits to living a stealth wealth lifestyle.
I’m not here to brag about the fact that I’ve been financially successful. In fact, I’m actually pretty uncomfortable coming out as “rich.” That being said, I think that taking a stealth wealth approach to life is something that we should normalize in our culture, and I want to help others learn how to gain financial freedom without falling prey to the normal traps that come along with increasing net worth.
So what is stealth wealth, exactly, and how do you spot it? In this post, I’ll explore everything you need to know about rich people who purposefully live below their means.
"Stealth wealth" is a term used to describe when someone doesn't outwardly express the fact that they have a high net worth. They keep it on the down-low. It's not that they aren't rich; it's that they are secretly wealthy because they don't want to drive too much attention or focus on their money.
Let's say you're a wealthy person. Rather than taking your wealth and purchasing status symbols like extravagant homes, expensive cars, and designer clothes, stealth wealth means you keep your wealth under wraps. Some people even go so far as to keep the fact that they’re rich from their family members and closest friends.
Ok, before you google “stealth wealth meaning,” here’s the simplest definition: stealth wealth is when you’re rich but you don’t act rich. You fly under the radar, not drawing any attention to the fact that you’ve secretly been amassing a fortune. Some people take stealth wealth to the extreme, where even their closest friends and family don’t know that they’ve become rich or that they’ve managed to retire early.
People who practice stealth wealth might look like completely average people from the outside. They drive regular-looking cars, don’t have flashy clothes or jewelry, and generally don’t engage in the culture of overconsumption. Rather than living in a multi-million dollar ocean-front mansion that they could technically afford, the stealthily wealthy opt for homes that are modest and unassuming.
If you’ve never heard of stealth wealth before, you might wonder why someone that had amassed a fortune in their life would go to the trouble of hiding their wealth from the people around them.
However, there are actually a lot of good reasons to practice stealth wealth. While living a luxurious lifestyle and enjoying your extreme wealth can certainly be pleasurable, these are usually short-lived benefits. When you are rich and you let everyone know it, you’ll soon learn that there are some serious downsides to advertising your wealth.
People might choose to practice stealth wealth for a number of reasons. One of these is that it helps to avoid the reality where other people will expect things from you because they assume you have more spending power than they do. If you let others know that you’re rich, you’ll soon find that some of the people around you start expecting you to pick up the tab at a restaurant for a group of 20, loaning them money when they fall on hard times, and more.
Of course, the point of being wealthy isn’t hoarding your money stingily without ever spreading the love. The point, though, is that others don’t always understand that you still have to manage your money and make smart financial decisions even when you have a high net worth.
When you practice stealth wealth, it can also help you avoid some of the judgment that comes along with being rich. If you start flaunting your deep pockets, you’ll soon learn that lots of people have opinions about rich people and they won’t think twice about judging you for your wealth. These people might think that having money means that you are inherently greedy or exploitative, that you amassed your fortune simply through privilege, or they might simply resent you for having what they want but don’t have. Even if the people around you don’t have a negative perspective on wealth, you’ll likely find that the more money people know you have, the more they seem to know exactly what you should be doing with it.
If you’re curious to know if someone secretly has more wealth than they let on, there are some common stealth wealth signs you can keep an eye out for. People who practice stealth wealth won’t be showing off their riches in an obvious way, but if you pay close attention you can notice some indications that they are very comfortable financially.
Someone that has worked to become wealthy is typically very goal-oriented. They understand how much attention and focus it takes to build up wealth over time. These individuals aren’t likely to just go with the whims of the crowd– instead, they have a sense of where they want to go and they stay on their path.
While people who are secretly wealthy might not flaunt it, they also understand at a deep level just how valuable time is. Someone who is rich might realize that they know how to make more money, but you can’t make more time. However, you can choose how you spend your time, and a stealthily wealthy person is going to be much more inclined to pay others to do time-consuming activities like dealing with a plumbing problem, mowing their lawn, or clearing snow from their driveway.
When a person is financially secure, they often have unique confidence in themselves. They have worked hard to get to where they are. They believe in themselves and the path they have chosen in life, and they are proud of what they have accomplished. At the same time, they are not falling prey to the ego boost that comes from flaunting one's wealth, which is another signifier that they are secure in themselves and don’t need the approval of others to believe in themselves.
If you have a neighbor that seems to live modestly but really doesn’t seem to sweat the small stuff, they might be secretly wealthy. When there are issues that need to be dealt with, whether they can be fixed with money or not, people who practice stealth wealth are often able to stay calm under pressure and keep problems that crop up in perspective.
While people who have stealth wealth don’t show off their riches by definition, there are a few material signs of someone’s secret fortune. You might know someone who wears simple, unbranded clothes, but they seem to fit them incredibly well and be made of high-quality materials.
Rich people that don’t feel the need to flaunt their wealth often do recognize the importance of comfort and quality when it comes to clothing. While they feel no need to plaster brands all over their body like a walking billboard, they definitely understand that high-quality clothes can help you feel your best and will last longer than your average Walmart t-shirt.
Another stealth wealth sign is when a person’s house and car, even when they are very modest, are always impeccably maintained. This is because people who have amassed wealth and keep it to themselves often understand the value of the investments they make. Not only can they afford to maintain their house and their car, but they also understand that it is more affordable in the long term to stay on top of maintenance rather than deferring it and eventually having to make pricey repairs.
While this isn’t always the case, there is a tendency for people with stealth wealth to be loners. These people have led very focused lives, and they are protective of their wealth, their time, and their personal lives. To those outside of their close family and friends, it might appear that they prefer to keep to themselves.
People who practice stealth wealth also tend to value activities with more depth rather than those that produce immediate gratification. You likely won’t find them spending big bucks at the bar or partying on a yacht. Rather than having a huge social group, these people tend to have a small circle of close friends and family with whom they feel they can genuinely relate.
If you don’t have money stacked up, there’s a good chance you have to think about a short time frame just to make it through each day. When problems crop up, they have to take priority. You are driven by your immediate needs rather than your long-term goals.
People with stealth wealth, though, can afford to think on a longer timeline. In fact, being able to perceive their lives in this way is exactly how they managed to amass wealth in the first place.
A person that is secretly wealthy isn’t eager to brag about how much money they made this year or how successful their investment portfolio has been. They have a sense of confidence and self-assuredness which means they don’t need affirmation from other people. This means that you won’t find them dropping hints about their wealth or trying to get pats on the back from other people for their accomplishments.
What does a stealthy wealthy lifestyle include?
Being secretly wealthy doesn’t have to mean that you live in a dangerous neighborhood in a run-down, rat-infested house. You aren’t necessarily trying to convince people that you’re poor. You just don’t want them to know that you’re rich.
Basically, this means masquerading as someone who’s somewhere around the middle class.
You can have a nice house, a nice car, and nice clothes, but just not too nice.
When it comes to cars, you want to choose something that is practical, not too flashy, reliable, and offers a good value for the money. Warren Buffett famously drives a Cadillac XTS, which is a car that retailed at the time of purchase at around $45,000. Mark Zuckerberg is often seen driving the $30,000 Acura TSX, and the wealthiest woman in the world, Alice Walton, drives a 2006 Ford F-150 King Ranch which retails for about $40,000.
When I made my first million in 2014, I didn’t trade my tiny apartment for a luxury penthouse. Instead, I stayed in that little apartment for another two years before “upgrading” to a home in a small working-class neighborhood in Arkansas. Even though I reached a point where I had a seven-figure income, I chose to maintain a modest lifestyle because I didn’t see money as a part of my identity.
Though it can be tempting to buy an MTV-Cribs-style house when you strike it rich, there are a lot of secret costs to living that type of lifestyle. On top of the downsides of having others know that you are wealthy, living in a 10,000+ square foot home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It can feel like you’re living in a magazine instead of a home, it costs a lot to maintain, and you’ll likely find you need to manage a full staff to keep the place in good working order. Ultimately, it’s rarely worth it.
When it comes to family, there are some major benefits to practicing a stealth wealth lifestyle. Rather than letting your sweet children grow up with a bad case of affluenza, you can pass on all of the valuable lessons you’ve learned about building wealth in a smart, healthy way. This way, when it comes time to pass on your wealth to your children, you know that it will benefit them rather than destroy them.
Rich people know that a key principle to getting wealthy and staying wealthy is having your money work for you. Rather than “investing” your money in flashy cars and obscenely expensive dinners, people with stealth wealth invest their assets in a healthily diversified portfolio. This can mean some combination of real estate, mutual funds, stocks, bonds, precious metals, small businesses, futures, options, and more. When you take your hard-earned money and invest it rather than living a lifestyle focused on consumption, you can increase your wealth and buy yourself the most valuable asset of all: time.
People hide their wealth through a number of different avenues. You can keep your wealth a secret from the people around you by living in a modest home, driving a regular car, and avoiding dressing in luxury-brand clothing. You don’t splurge on eating out at trendy restaurants or advertise your opulent vacation on Instagram. In the same way that many people who aren’t wealthy are able to curate an image of being rich, you can curate an image of being average.
Rich entrepreneurs might choose to create anonymous LLCs for their businesses to help separate their personal information from their successful businesses. There are also a number of tax-avoidant strategies that can be used to help reduce your tax burden, but, for obvious reasons, you should be sure to work with a CPA to ensure that everything you’re doing is above board.
When we think of wealth, we often think of mega-celebrities that are constantly in the public conversation. People like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Tom Cruise, Oprah, and Warren Buffett are the types of people that typically come to mind first.
However, there are plenty of people that are very wealthy that fly under the radar. If you are pursuing a career that puts you in the public eye, though, it becomes much more difficult.
While your income and ability to invest can have a big impact on your ability to build wealth, you don’t have to make a seven-figure income to get rich over time. Some tactics secretly wealthy people have used to build their net worth include:
Lots of people think that getting rich is just a matter of luck, but that’s usually not the case. Even if someone seems like an overnight success, there’s likely at least a decade's worth of hard work lurking in the background. Becoming secretly wealthy is definitely within reach, but it takes dedication, focus, drive, and a solid plan. There are a lot of different ways to make money, but the most important thing to recognize is that loud consumption doesn’t make people wealthy. What makes people rich is economic productivity.
In lieu of fancy cars and opulent houses, what does one gain from their wealth when they don’t flaunt it? For many people, the benefits of stealth wealth far outweigh the short-term gains of being openly rich.
When you live below your means, you can step outside of the rat race and work on the things that are truly meaningful to you. Whether you retire early or you keep your day job, you have more freedom to decide how you spend your time.
One of the craziest things that can happen to wealthy people is that they often still feel a sense of insecurity that drives them to make more money, even when they already have plenty. One of the reasons for this is lifestyle creep. Basically, for some people, the more money they have the more they will spend. As their net worth increases, so do their expenses.
When you practice stealth wealth, you can keep more of what you make. Rather than continuously trading in your perfectly suitable house for something that screams “I’m rich!”, you choose to purposefully live below your means. This allows you to have the comfort of knowing that you have a huge financial cushion if you were to fall on hard times, and you also aren’t taking on huge monthly expenses that could leave you bankrupt if the tides turn against you.
If you are open about how much money you have, people will start to expect you to pick up the bill. When you keep your wealth to yourself, you can avoid these expectations.
Unfortunately, some people see the wealthy as an opportunity to get more than their fair share of a job. Whether it’s a contractor, an auto mechanic, or another quote-based profession, being clearly wealthy is likely going to have some people charging you more than usual for a job because they think you won’t notice or bat an eye. When you keep your wealth on the down low, you’re less likely to get ripped off in this type of scenario.
When you’re rich and people know it, you’ll find you have plenty of friends. However, how do you know they really like you for you and don’t just want a taste of that opulent lifestyle?
You can avoid this entirely by keeping your riches under wraps. You’ll know that the friends you make just want to be around you because they like you, not because they’re hoping you’ll loan them money or buy them something shiny.
Rich people are constantly being solicited for donations, loans, and gifts. When people don’t have wealth, they often don’t understand that it isn’t an infinite pool of money. You have to be selective about where you spend money in order to stay wealthy.
In fact, if it becomes publicly known that you’re rich, you’ll be surprised by who pops up out of the woodwork. Relatives and acquaintances that you haven’t heard from in years will all of a sudden call “just to see how you’re doing.” Soon enough, it will become clear that they’re actually looking for a handout or even just the ego boost of being in touch with someone wealthy.
At the end of the day, the fewer people know that you have deep pockets, the less you’ll be put in a position where you have to say no.
One of the biggest dangers of wealth is letting it get to your head. It can reinforce some negative traits because you have more options. There are good and bad sides to everything, including having wealth and living luxuriously. When you live an opulent lifestyle, you’re increasingly surrounded by people who are just telling you what you want to hear. You can lose touch with the rest of your society and you can lose touch with who you really are underneath it all.
When you practice stealth wealth, it reminds you to stay humble. You are reminded to be grateful for what you have accomplished and what you have gained. You remember what it was like to have less and you want to help others succeed rather than fear being tossed from your golden throne.
Through this practice, you are building up a cushion that will catch you if the tides turn against you. Rather than spending all your money as if you’ve tapped into an infinite stream, you keep a good head on your shoulders and remember to value all of the best things in life– the things that money simply can’t buy.
“It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation which give you happiness.”
-Thomas Jefferson
“Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.”
-Henry David Thoreau
“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”
-Jim Rohn
“If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die.”
-Warren Buffett
“…Not doing what we love in the name of greed is very poor management of our lives.”
-Warren Buffett
“Too many people spend money they earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people that they don’t like.”
-Will Rogers
“He is the richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.”
-Socrates
“Wealth is a tool of freedom, but the pursuit of wealth is the way to slavery.”
-Frank Herbert
I’m a huge proponent of the stealth wealth lifestyle. So, if you’re asking me “should I practice stealth wealth?” I’m probably going to answer yes.
There really are very few downsides to this lifestyle. Sure, you don’t get all of the affirmation and ego-boosts that come along with flaunting your wealth, but deep down you know those are superficial gains anyway. While there are plenty of benefits of stealth wealth, one of the biggest pros for me is that I know that accruing money isn’t what makes me me. Being economically productive is meaningful to me, and that’s why I do it.
Our culture is one that largely centers around consumerism. In lieu of more meaningful things, we often look to material objects and signifiers of wealth in pursuit of some kind of satisfaction. Ultimately, though, we all know at some level that these things typically produce more emptiness rather than taking it away.
The point of wealth doesn’t have to be to consume, consume, and then consume some more. What if at the end of your life you produced more than you consume? What if your time on earth was a net gain rather than a net loss for your society?
When you build wealth, it gives you the opportunity to climb up the hierarchy of needs and participate in work you truly find meaningful. Whether that means building wells for Pygmies in the Congo or offering the best darn landscaping services in all of Oklahoma, stealth wealth lets you focus on your true purposes without getting weighed down by all of the potential distractions of being rich.
So there you have it– a thorough dive into the world of the secretly wealthy. As you now know, there are tons of benefits of stealth wealth that allow you to live the life you want without getting dragged down by all of the negative aspects of being known as a rich guy. When you live the stealth wealth lifestyle, it means you can focus on the things that really matter to you and live the life you want without falling prey to lifestyle creep or other unfortunate side effects of being wealthy.
I’m only talking publicly about my path to wealth and my choice to live as a secretly wealthy person because I think it would be a genuinely good thing for our culture and our society. Being rich doesn’t have to mean that you’ve just graduated to a higher rung of the rat race. If more people chose the stealth wealth lifestyle, it could mean that more people have the time and headspace to meaningfully contribute to society.
A bill banning catalog and internet sales of tobacco - including premium cigars - just passed subcommittee in the House of Representatives. The bill also raises the smoking age to 21 for everyone, including military members.
That this even passed the subcommittee shows just how deranged and pathetic the do-gooder, nanny-state weaklings in congress really are.
We've become a nation of whining children, incapable of dealing with the fact that liberty means having the option to splurge on ourselves when we decide.
Sometimes that means fried foods, sometimes that means desserts, sometimes that means a large sugary drink at the theater, and sometimes that means some premium tobacco.
That premium cigars are included in this anti-smoking garbage means it's NOT about health.
Premium cigars are created from 100% tobacco leaves, hand-crafted following centuries of tradition, and are generally used to mark moments of celebration, to bond with friends, or just to live the good life.
Unlike cigarettes, premium cigars aren't inhaled, aren't chain smoked, and in moderation have little-to-no negative impact on one's health.
In fact, most life insurance companies explicitly protect the right of the insured to smoke an occasional cigar - some even allow multiple smokes per month.
Again, it's not about health. But even if it was, we still shouldn't care because we're adults and should have the right to make adult decisions - like how much we eat, how much we drink, and how we live our lives in general.
That this bill also raises the smoking age for MILITARY MEMBERS to the age of 21 is beyond asinine. If you're old enough to die in Afghanistan, then you're old enough to smoke a Davidoff with me before you're shipped out.
This is just another step in the never-ending march of a decaying society towards permanent adolescence. I don't want any part.
A fundamental part of a high-school education in America should involve understanding personal finance, the true cost of credit, and how delaying consumption for a few years can be the difference between financial hardship and an early retirement.
I don't mean a class or two of textbook information about how credit works. I mean actually teaching the principles of financial discipline.
We need a producer society focused on creating value - not a consumer society focused on taking as much as possible. Think: thrift and productivity as a culture.
Consumerism has become one of the most destructive quasi-religious elements of modern culture. People identify themselves on the basis of what they consume - not what they do or who they are.
That's why the following should be taught as a comprehensive part of high-school - and heck, college - education. Not just a single class, but as a fundamental approach to finance whenever it comes up, referenced throughout curriculum, branding, and materials.
For example, here are some thoughts that could be developed either through in-depth explanations or specific tutorials and hands-on guidance:
Building a culture of thrift is possible, but it requires focusing on just that - culture. Finance isn't just about math. People have to begin, as early as possible, to understand that not all consumption is "reasonable." We should view consumption with suspicion.
I say this as someone who was a millionaire for years before I bought a new vehicle. I live in a small house that I renovated. My biggest luxury is an occasional $15 cigar. This doesn't mean I don't live well - I live like a king. I just don't mindlessly consume.
The crazy thing is that basic personal finance teaches us to reject consumerism and ironically helps us achieve a much better lifestyle. Rather than spending money on things we don't need, we find freedom - and more money down the road to spend on experiences and a good life.
Good personal finance turns money around so that rather than us being enslaved by the economic system, we're using the economic system to maximize our own options, happiness, and legacy. It's incredibly powerful.
Consumerism is one of the most destructive forces in modern society. It takes potentially free people and enslaves them to empty consumption, constantly increasing their standards for what they believe "normal" people should be able to consume. The end result is an impoverished society... surrounded by material wealth.
Good finance is critical to a good life. That's why so many philosophies - from the book of Proverbs to Stoic thought - emphasize contentment, self-control as something to practice like any other skill, and a lifestyle of discipline.
What better place to develop a strong culture than educational institutions? What use is an educational institution that doesn't educate on the fundamental ideas, concepts, and identities that are key to every other part of society's prosperity?
Imagine every high school student becoming intimately familiar with these concepts. It would transform the world.
Mark Zuckerberg has announced that he wants to shift Facebook away from "passive" content to more active, "engaging" content. In other words, your Facebook newsfeed will soon replace the content that you might merely click on with content that you and your friends are more likely to engage with.
In other words, the pages that post 30 times per day hoping they can monopolize the newsfeeds of their "readers" will be penalized. Facebook traffic is going to shift heavily to brands that are dramatically more engaging.
Of course, this transformation has led to instant backlash from a wide variety of internet publishers -- probably because they don't really understand what Mark was saying, why he said it, or what the consequences of Facebook's easy-to-manipulate passive content ecosystem have been so far.
I founded one of the most popular political websites in the world. It began with an important mission: speaking truth to power by giving a voice to the forgotten middle class.
In the past, I wrote headlines for articles that reached over 15,000,000 users on Facebook. From a single posting. On a single page.
I've written articles that have been read by millions and millions of people from Facebook. No, I don't mean "seen" by millions of people. I mean millions of people clicked on the actual link and read the message crafted to influence their political interpretation of the world.
My site's style focused on the sizzling elements of stories that the Wall Street Journal and even Fox News didn’t want to cover. It was a perfect marriage with Facebook's algorithm because it ignored branding and focused on whether users would click on stories.
It was good storytelling. It was fun. And it worked frighteningly well.
Realistically, my personal headlines and articles had drastically more reach than the entire "Russian interference" scandal covered by mainstream outlets like the New York Times. So when it comes to the algorithm change and the implications, I'm speaking from the position of someone who has utilized this algorithm more than almost anyone on earth.
Still, the ecosystem that allowed what I was able to do is now mostly gone - and that's a good thing.
Visionless people look for consistency regardless of context. Some want the ecosystem that existed 4-5 years ago to be all that exists going forward. That's disturbingly short-sighted.
In the past, alternative media needed a huge boost to shake up the narrative. Now we're in a weird place where those same alternative media brands acquired too much power, and we need to change things again.
I now run the Conservative Institute, a very different project. It seeks to provide reliable, trustworthy news for conservatives in an era where dishonesty has become a fundamental pillar of the right-wing media ecosystem. The goal of CI content is not to "go viral" - it's to simply tell the truth. Accuracy is the primary goal, come what may.
We don't defend Trump when he's wrong. We don't attack liberals when they're right. We only report what we believe to be important stories that should circulate on the right wing - and everywhere. A typical article will link to sources like the New York Times, federal agencies, and PDFs of actual studies.
Now, Facebook seems to be responding to the same basic issues that CI was built to combat: a social media ecosystem that replaced high-quality, investigative journalism with shallow "passive" content mostly ripped quickly from other - often just as shallow - sources.
To better understand what's happening, let's look at the following basic concepts that provide context for the Facebook change.
Never in the history of the world was it so easy to reach so many people with a message.
I know people who had no experience in marketing, journalism, research, or much of anything else, reach thousands of people with low-quality stories mostly lifted from other sources.
In fact, ripping off my projects was a pretty easy way for someone with no talent or instincts to make a healthy six-figure income. It happened frequently.
That entire system was incredibly powerful for shaking things up. Now, we're in a different situation - the balance has shifted from the Associated Press, NBC, and local newspapers to an army of smaller sites that often spread misinformation, nasty accusations, or outright lies. Another way to describe it? Fake news.
The algorithms that decided how many people would see content didn't account for "accuracy" at all. Who cares if a fake story goes viral? It was getting the clicks and shares it needed to get more and more traffic on Facebook. That's a massive design flaw, especially when alternative media became so powerful.
This was a temporary hiccup in world history. "Alternative" and "mainstream" media aren't the future - quality media is, regardless of where on the political spectrum it may fall.
Everyone has an ignorant family member known for accidentally sharing fake news stories they didn't verify. The idea that a global media distribution system should give that person just as much power as someone who isn't as gullible is absurd.
I don't mean this in a condescending manner at all. I'm ignorant of many things just like you are. But many people simply don't have the time or expertise in media and geopolitics to know what source should be considered "trustworthy" and what source is taking them for a ride.
If anything, this system isn’t even fair to the person falling for the fake news - the distribution system should minimize the lies that show up in that person's newsfeed as well.
Some will huff and puff over what I just said, pretending they deeply care about ignorant people having the right to easy access to fake and misleading news. The problem is that this is mostly bad-faith virtue signaling.
Let me be blunt: passive-content farms/publishers don't respect their audiences. They often laugh at them. It’s easy to get rich off of people who don’t know any better.
Those market incentives are largely gone, and that's a wonderful thing.
"Passive" content is content that requires no investment from the reader. You don't have to have any kind of relationship with the brand or the content. It's content that happens to be in your feed, and you just may find it interesting enough to click on and read without comment - or not. Most of the content in your newsfeed is like this.
You probably have no emotional connection to the brand and if you click on the story, you may skim it or watch some video, and then exit out and never think about it again. No comments, no shares, no personal connection - nothing. It's passive content.
"Passive content" is where fake news comes from. It's the ecosystem that allows fake news to flourish. It's the system built on a series of economic incentives that allow bad faith publishers to make money manipulating you for fun and profit.
There are a few brands that manage to engage me with almost all of their content; Tim Ferris, Ryan Holiday, Bloomberg, The Art of Manliness, etc. I engage with their community, share their links to my personal page, and have a connection to the brands themselves. They don't just happen to show up on my feed and trick me into clicking.
I have a deep appreciation of the personalities behind the content. That's vital. That's good. And that's the future.
If your business model is based on easy traffic from one website, that's your problem, not Facebook's problem.
As the founder of Axios said to the Wall Street Journal:
"Facebook is a public company that controls its own decisions... Publishers should do the same damn thing."
This isn't new. Copyblogger, (a resource any content marketer should see as kind of like a regularly updated Bible), wrote years ago:
"If you're relying on Facebook or Google to bring in all of your new customers, you're sharecropping. You’re hoping the landlord will continue to like you and support your business, but the fact is, the landlord has no idea who you are and doesn’t actually care."
The future will still have plenty of content. The future will still have plenty of news. But it won't be low-quality content lifted from other sources without any attempt at providing extra value like additional context, additional sources, or additional facts.
The future belongs to quality publishers with strong brands and vibrant communities. This is the way it's been for centuries - and this is the way it will continue to be for centuries more.
If Facebook's change is going to harm your business, then discover higher-quality, more long-term oriented workarounds. Build an online "TV" show. Launch a podcast. Write a book. Go to other platforms. But don't blame Facebook for not allowing you cheap access to a gravy train.
The Clipper Ship Strategy: to make money during a gold rush, focus on supplying a secondary demand created by a primary boom. Chances are, it'll have drastically less competition while being just as lucrative.
Cryptocurrencies have a similar situation unfolding. Everyone is trying to get rich buying the 'coins' in order to sell them to someone else later. This is extremely risky, and just as many people will get wiped out as will make money. It's one thing to buy bitcoins if you're worried about a paradigm shift (like I described in my 2013 article on Seeking Alpha). But it's another thing to buy Bitcoins hoping it's your personal gold rush.
Trying to strike gold - or its digital equivalence - is for suckers or extremely skilled speculators. Chances are, you're not one of the latter.
Here's the real way people are making money with cryptos:
Either way, whenever you see a gold rush, don't fall for the trap. Don't go for the bait. Don't become a miner. Find a way to build wealth by looking for the second opportunity - it's probably being overlooked by others and there's more room to grow and profit.
When Caesar ordered that statues in honor of Pompey be restored after they'd been torn down, Cicero wisely informed him, "You have restored Pompey's statues, but you have made your own secure."
In other words, because Caesar acknowledged that his enemy still deserved his statues to be established, he wasn't weakening his position or legacy at all. If anything, it was a step towards ensuring that even his enemies would acknowledge him for well-earned accolades.
In the same way, if a certain president made a comment about a controversial topic that I agreed with, I would intentionally make it clear that I understood his point and agreed with it. Not because I am now in agreement with everything he says, but because such an approach pays dividends in the opposite direction should the shoe be on the other foot, in other words.
A collapse in good faith when it comes to appreciating goodness even in our enemies will lead to extreme political division and eventual massive fallout. For example, just take a look around the world now. Radicalism and pettiness go together.
